


Death and All His Friends

by Dreamitbeit



Series: Reapers CO [1]
Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Eventual Smut, Everyone Is Gay, Hating ice crystals, M/M, Newt is parched, Slice of Life, Thomas is just trying to keep it together, Thomas is so thirsty, a lot of pot smoking, brenda is cooler than everyone else, death is glitter and gold, newtmas - Freeform, pastel occult, so many plants, unnecessary amounts of glitter descriptions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-07 08:17:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21454906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreamitbeit/pseuds/Dreamitbeit
Summary: “It’s the family business?” Newt offers and Thomas’s eye twitches. There is a moment of silence. This is, to Thomas, not an acceptable explanation and/or argument.“I thought your mum was a head hunter!” Thomas shrieks.Or; Newt is death, Thomas is just along for the ride.
Relationships: Newt/Thomas (Maze Runner)
Series: Reapers CO [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932637
Comments: 41
Kudos: 160





	1. Grave Situations  pt.1

Thomas had, for lack of a better word, royally fucked up. 

He slipped on the brick of the ally and caught himself with wildly spinning arms that scrabbled for purchase against the fire escape. Steady again, he took a deep breath and lunged upward, desperate fingers hooking around the first rung of the ladder hanging eight feet off the ground. 

He was currently hanging off the ground because he was trying to break into his best friend’s apartment. He was currently trying to break into his best friend’s apartment because, he had, in fact royally fucked up. The royal fuck up in question was that he’d left a copy of a rare French film at said best friend’s apartment. And that said rare film in said apartment was key to a previously unmentioned essay that was due in-_shit_ thirteen hours and twenty three minutes. 

He was a _senior_ for god sakes, he was an _adult_ god damn it, he was getting his _shit_ together by gods will. He was definitely going to take Minho up on his offer to work out together because he was very clearly out of shape _holy fuck_. 

Tongue sticking out the side of his mouth Thomas swung himself up and climbed a rung, and then another. He didn’t exactly feel good about breaking into Newt’s apartment, but he spent about roughly fifty percent of his time there anyways, so. 

Newt wouldn’t mind, he reasoned. Besides, he’d tried to call both Newt and Sonya but neither of those fuckers had picked up. And he really needed that DVD, so home invasion it was. 

Successfully scaling the fire escape and taking the steps two at a time to the landing, Thomas tumbled into the unlocked window of Newt’s room and knocked everything off his wood desk on the way down. And, okay, that was not good, not in the slightest. Newt loved his desk, loved the organized chaos of it all. Thomas leant over, quickly gathering papers and piling them together, absentmindedly righting the unlit black wax candle on Newt’s night stand while looking for the DVD case. (“Min, I can’t just stream it! It’s got original shots that were edited out of later versions, it changes the ENTIRE TONE.” Thomas had shrieked into his cell phone directly before the home invasion.) 

In the process of picking up what looked like the takeout menu of that new dumpling place Gally had been screaming about, a large envelope fell onto the ground with a deafening thump, spilling the contents. Thomas frowned. 

With slight hesitation he reached down, picking up the now empty envelope to examine it. And it definitely wasn’t snooping, not at all, because who the hell wouldn’t notice this thing?

It was dyed a deep charcoal black, with a thick glossy coating that gave it a waxy feel. He turned it over and the glue strip used to seal it was not, if fact, clear and faintly bitter smelling. It was a thick line of gold glitter and Thomas got a whiff of pineapple and coconut. It is then that he notices the return address. In small, playful shining gold scrawl in the top right corner was this: 

Employment Services  
Heresy Department  
Reapers CO.   
Sixth Circle of Hell  
Hell

Thomas snorted. Of course Newt had a weird death envelope. Probably some kind of invitation to an edgy art exhibit or strange merchandise for an indie band that’ll be headlining Coachella in four years. With a grin Thomas reaches down to stuff the letter that had fallen from the envelope back inside. Thick parchment paper, soft to the touch and strangely heavy, as if weighed down by the ink on the page. Thomas’s eyes catching the words.

“Congratulations on the complement of your trial employment period! You are now, officially, Death!” The worlds announced cheerfully back at him. In the corner of the page was a small insignia of a skeleton hand holding a scythe. The date on the letter was four months ago and Thomas absentmindedly made a note to get Newt an incoming and outgoing filing system for paperwork. Thomas abandoned the paper that continued to describe Reapers CO’s mission statement (wandering soul collection and gentle encouragement for ‘those trickier cases’) to look at the other item that’d come in the package. 

There was an I.D card. Newt’s sarcastic tilt of chin and easy smile stared up at him from thin laminated plastic, an almost replica to Thomas’s student card and Minho’s gym trainer employee pass. Next to Newt’s small picture was a set of numbers and a title. ‘Reaper number: 173, Junior executive’ it declares. Thomas snorted, card in hand. It was fairly on brand for Newt to spend what was clearly a good chunk of money on gothic bureaucratic based paraphernalia. He did wear a _lot_ of black. Still holding the envelope and its contents in one hand, Thomas turned to look for the DVD. Nowhere in sight, he got down on the polished hardwood floor (the rent control was god-tier) and looked under Newt’s bed. 

Huh. 

Maybe there needed to be a discussion with the british boy who was simultaneously endearingly playful and so sharply sarcastic he was a danger to those around him. With shaking fingers, Thomas pulled out the scythe that had been thrown haphazardly under Newt’s bed. He stood, examining it, the first actual prickles of misgivings forming in his stomach. A continuous tree branch, roughly as thick as Thomas’s forearm stood eyelevel with him, bent crooked in an almost drunk list. Attached to the end of the jet-black wood was a long, curved dagger, a flashing gleam cutting across it’s impeccably polished surface, and any time light hit it there was a dance of glitter, rainbow color, but with a large presence of gold that shone back at him. 

So intent on his examination, Thomas failed to hear the front door open and the golden haired residents of the apartment arriving home. Their bickering a practiced dance borne from affection and siblinghood. Newt’s bedroom door creaked open, Newt’s head still turned to yell at his sister with one foot in the door. 

“-got to get this one sent down to processing anyways and if you think for one second I’m going to get milk after I did it the last three times, _I don’t care_ that you let me borrow-“ Newt stepped into the room, lazily swinging what looked like a thurible. (Thomas’s grandmother had been the last gasp of his families catholocism.) The golden engraved sphere, roughly the size of a hollow baseball was attached to a long thin chain. It was admitting a thick glowing purple smoke flecked with brilliant sparks of orange that seemed almost liquid in density that seemed to pour out of the small intricately woven holes, practically dripping out of the openings and floating heavily to the floor where they promptly melted into nothing.

Newt stopped dead as Thomas whipped around, holding what could very potentially be cult items in his hands, mouth open and brain spinning with no traction. Newt looked first at Thomas’s left hand, eyes locking in on the envelope, before trailing up the length of the scythe, finally coming to rest of Thomas’s slightly guilty face. 

Newt’s eyebrows raised and the incense holder stopped swinging, giving a playful little rattle as it hung at Newt’s knee, as if to remind him that it was still there. 

“Ah.” He said, in that light British tone, so dry and unassuming it could’ve been reduced to crumbs with the softest pressure. “See-here’s the thing.” 

-

They had gone to the local campus bar, The Trinity. Finding out your best friend was a guilder of lost souls tended to require a stiff drink. Thomas stares blandly at Newt over his irish cappuccino (Mary the bartender and part owner of the beloved establishment had raised her eyebrows but said nothing.) and waited, the two of them tucked into a cozy booth at the back, thick leather bench seats crackling under their shifting weight. 

Newt frowned and pointedly ignored Thomas’s fingers drumming on the table. “I’m death. Well, one of the ‘deaths’ is more accurate.” 

“One of.” Thomas clarifies. Newt nods. Somewhere, in the background, someone is complaining about a research paper.

“It’s a big job Tommy. The boss delegates.” 

“Delegates.” Thomas says, voice a octave higher than normal. He leant forward, Newt doing the same, the two of them co-conspirators. “Newt what the hell.” Thomas hissed, shell-shocked. Because, Newt, what the hell. 

Newt scrunched his face up, conversation clearly not going the way he’d wanted it to. Like, royally not going the way he wanted it to. He mouths wordlessly for a moment, trying his hardest to find an acceptable explanation, and/or, argument. 

“It’s the family business?” Newt offers and Thomas’s eye twitches. There is a moment of silence. This is, to Thomas, not an acceptable explanation and_/or_ argument. 

“I thought your mum was a head hunter!” Thomas shrieks. Necks swiveling momentarily in their direction before turning back to their own tables, disregarding the outburst. Fall mid-terms were about to start. This was not the first, and _definitely_ wouldn’t be the last mental break down the establishment would witness. 

Newt holds a finger up in defense. “Well, to be fair, she does _technically_ head hunt. Just, you know, for literal heads.” 

In a sense of suspended animation, he digests this. Thomas blows on his cappuccino and watches Newt’s hands curl around the scalding cup of coffee. Black, ordered with an easy smile and a swooning liberal arts major at the seat directly next to the cash. Newt had a way of making people fall for him without being conscious of it (Thomas included, but he was still marching to the tune of willful denial.). The sharp profile he cast in a perfectly tailored black suit and tie didn’t hurt. He hadn’t bothered to change after the somber event he’d been attending. 

They’d met back in Thomas’s first year. Newt, a sophomore under a crushing Classics workload had taken an intro to film course hoping that it would involve watching movies and eating popcorn. (“Darkness at noon.” Newt had said, in explanation. “It’s what everyone calls this class. Because, you know, it’s easy, and you get to watch movies.” Thomas had scoffed in offense.) Instead it revolved around picking apart the nuances of continuous wide range shots and the French influences from the earlier renaissance and, coincidentally, Thomas. 

They had bonded over marathons and long nights in the library and before Thomas knew it he’d acquired a best friend that was neither Teresa or Minho, a feat in and of itself. It was roughly two months into his junior year that he’d started to wonder if it might be a bit more than that. Best friends didn’t usually tend to fixate on long pale fingers that hinted at a surprisingly strong grip. 

But, denial was great, Newt was great, and Thomas was great. And definitely didn’t think about how Newt’s bangs fell teasingly in his eyes when he nodded his head.

The bar they sat in, which doubled as a café, was, for lack of a better term, a favorite haunt of students. Situated between the main student housing neighborhoods and campus, it boasted a five minute walk from almost any spot that stressed out students resided within. Warm deep brown bookshelves lined the entirety of the space, volumes of exploding color on design and modern art mingling with muted worn-down tombs bound in flat black. All of them interspersed with various trinkets left over the years by the would-be scholars. Just to the left of Newt’s head on a shelf was an old faded mug filled with various preowned ballpoint pens, a small label on the saucer exclaiming _ ‘lucky finals pens!! Take one, leave one’_. 

“So death gets the shivers?” He asks, only slightly sarcastic, watching the other boy give a tiny shake. Newt shrugs, taking a bit out of his bright pink sprinkle cookie and holding his cup closer to his chest. 

“It’s hard work you know.” He says around a mouthful of sugar. 

Terror seized Thomas’s heart at an errant idea. “But your not dead, right?” He asked quickly. Newt’s face made a small warm smile that gave Thomas’s fluttering heart hope. 

“No, Tommy, I’m not dead.”

Mollified, Thomas takes a sip of his drink and lets the warm liquid slide down his throat, staring out the rain pelted window. Trying to organize his jumbling thoughts. “Did you always know you were going to be death?” He wrinkles his nose. “A death? One of the deaths?” 

Newt shrugs, happily steering the conversation into calmer waters. It was, after all, pretty tough out there for recent graduates. “Not really. Fell into it in Senior year and it seemed like a good job to keep up during school. Flexible hours.” 

Thomas blinked. “You worked for a art collector during your Senior year.” His tone flat.

Newt held up his finger. “Technically-“ He started, cut off when Thomas stood up suddenly. 

“I need another drink.” 

Newt’s face scrunched up into a grimaced smile, nodding his head once in acceptance. “That’s fair.”

Another strong cappuccino later Thomas is beginning to feel the effects of the caffeine and alcohol and takes a deep breath. “So you’re one of the deaths.” He starts again and Newt nods. “How many others are there?”

Newt shrugs. “Dunno really. Corporate keeps it pretty under wraps. A fair number I suppose. We’ve only ever met one other reaper outside of Corporate and they were a bit pompous about the whole thing.”

“So you and your mum are deaths.” He said, trying to apply the concept to Newt’s mother, an incredibly cheerful woman who wore bright geometric prints and once every few months would drop off baked goods that their entire friend group would devour on rainy afternoons with blankets and thick curling weed smoke wafting out the window. Sonya and Newt and Thomas and the others sinking into the deep sofa’s and cushions and the uncountable number of houseplants that Sonya tended to like precious children. 

“And Sonya knows?”

Newt avoided his eye, picking up a spare pink sprinkle and placing it on his tongue, causing Thomas’s mind to short circuit momentarily. 

“Of course she does. Couldn’t exactly hide it from her and dad.” He blushes, clearly keeping something back in the explanation. Thomas didn’t push it. There was enough to deal with. He takes a sip of his almost empty mug and the sharp burn of liquor coats his tongue. 

“Does it always run in families?” He said. 

Newt made a seesaw with his head. “Sort of. It’s not like you have to, no one forces you into it. But it tends to go that way. You just sort of…have a knack for it. If you don’t want to do it, it’s fine, the positions always filled, but usually they like to keep it close circle.” Thomas nods as if this is a perfectly reasonable explanation and they fall into an easy comfortable silence. 

There is a high clear ding of a bell from the front door announcing another person’s entrance and a second later Thomas is being shoved over by Newt’s younger sister, her multiple hoop earrings jingling and the roughly twenty rings she wore on her fingers clicking against the wood of the table and glass of cider that she carried. 

The radiantly beautiful blonde smiled happily at Thomas and her high ponytail seemed to quiver in excitement. “So.” She said. “You know.” Thomas nodded and her smile grew, if possibly brighter. “Finally. Now I can stop running around the flat trying to find my scythe every time I’ve misplaced it.” 

Thomas’s eyebrows shot up. “Your-“ He turned to Newt mutinously. 

For the third time Newt held up a finger in defense. “Now, Tommy, _technically_-“

So even though finding out your best friend and _maybe_ crush (definitely more than a crush) and their sister were reapers of lost souls was enough to put anyone off kilter, Thomas still had that paper to finish which was now due in _shit_ eleven hours and fourteen minutes. Midterms most definitely waited for no man. He had stumbled home and grunted in appreciation when Minho, his personal savior and roommate since freshman year, handed him a plate of warm and highly nutritious food. Studying kinesiology and being a part-time trainer meant that Minho was passionate about brown rice. Really passionate. 

“Get the DVD?” Minho asked from his spot at their chipped, obligatory Ikea table. 

“Yep.” Thomas sighed, shoveling a mouthful of broccoli and rice into his mouth. “Among other things.” 

-

“Isn’t it, you know, sad?” Thomas asked Newt the next time he saw him, a few days after the dreaded paper had been handed in. Newt shrugged, taking a bite of the hot dog he’d just gotten from a stall vendor. Thomas had shaken his head vehemently when Newt’s eyebrows raised in question; Minho’s health food facts had started to get to him. 

They wandered down the quiet street, bright fall leaves crunching as they stopped to dig through dollar book bins. The air was sharp and had a tang of decay and Thomas inhaled deeply. Newt picked up an old fraying copy of The Stand and snorted, dropping a coin in the waiting jar. He shoved the book into his messenger bag before speaking. “It can be, sometimes. But mostly I just, you know, come and get them and bring them down to corporate. That’s where they’re processed.” 

“Processed?” 

Newt nodded. “Yeah. Souls are assigned based on the sins they’ve committed. Like, okay, I’m with the Heresy Department, sixth circle. Seemed like a good fit, lots of room for advancement.” 

Thomas’s shoulders scrunched and he readjusted his beanie over his ears against the cool autumn breeze. “Heresy? Like, people going against god’s words and teachings? That’s gotta be busy these days.”

Newt laughed loudly and freely, hair shining in the weak autumn sunlight in direct contrast to his black coat, sharp collar turned up and hands stuffed deep in pockets. “Not exactly. And, not really, ‘god’s words’. I guess it started out like that but now…it’s more of a concept. A set of guild lines, really. Like, one of the souls I reaped was a astrophysics that proved a flaw in a accepted equation. I’m assigned to the sixth circle, ‘Heresy’. It was a defining discovery but, it was seen as ‘heresy’ because it went against the accepted opinion.”

Thomas frowned. “And she went to hell for that? Even though she was right?”

“Of course not Tommy the woman was a genius.” He scoffed. 

“But…you brought her to Hell…” Newt waved his words away. 

“Reapers like Sunny and I are just the guilds, we kind of, like, come and show them the way to the next plane of existence. I brought her to the committee in Hell. Which is, not necessarily the worst place. It got a bad rap. A lot of out of context phrasing, if you know what I mean.” 

Thomas nodded, because a crush (love) made you batshit insane. “Sure.”

Newt smiled at his sarcasm, eyes cutting across to him before looking away. “The committee, they’re the ones that decide if the go up or down based on the sins, the context, the good things that came from it, or the bad.” 

Thomas stopped out front of the clothing store where he’d been eyeing a bright blue, purple, and pink sweatshirt that hung in the window, letting Newt’s words sink in fully. “There’s a committee?”

Newt rolled his eyes at the mention of said committee. “Oh yeah, they’re a big deal. The board meetings are a huge pain in the ass. I’ve never had to go, I’m low level, but mum always complains that they take way too long and never order enough food for everyone.” 

They continue their slow walk, and Thomas likes to imagine that they’re fingers brush more than necessary. “Are you gonna get in trouble for telling me all this stuff?” 

Newt smiled. “Mmm, if it ever comes up I’m sure I’ll get a talking too. Do you plan on blabbing?” 

“No!”

“Well, there you go.” 

“Huh.” Thomas says before looking at Newt curiously. “Is this why you always dress in all black? Is it a dress code? Keeps things traditional? Although, Sunny’s doesn’t look like she’s an out of work underkeeper.” He teased. 

Newt turned to him, stopping. Thomas pausing as well. 

“Tommy.” Like pulling on a cashmere sweater Newt slipped his accent into something posher, silky smooth, leaning in close. The hairs on Thomas’s arms rising in response. “I dress in all black because I look absolutely _dashing_ love.” Thomas squeaks like a rat and feels his face heat up, making Newt smile like the Cheshire cat noticing prey. They continued on their stroll and Thomas tries to swallow the heart that had jumped into his mouth. 

-

The week is a blur, and between frantic study sessions with Teresa and Minho in the library and finishing a report, he didn’t actually get to see Newt for a consecutive seven days. It was a bit concerning how much it bothered him. He was hiding it well.

“Seriously _what_ is wrong with you grouchy?” 

Thomas scowled at the girl perched on the stool by the cash register, debated admitting that he might have a little bit(a lot) of a infatuation with their mutual friend. He decides against it. His feelings for Newt were like the smoke from the hand rolled cigarettes that Newt snuck on the fire escape when Sonya wasn’t looking. The grey wisp’s drifting up into the air, changing constantly, thick and disorienting. 

“You gotta stop fucking with it or else it’ll get infected.” Thomas nagged instead over the clicking of coat hangers sliding along racks. Brenda blinked at him and scowled, making a show of lowering the finger that had been scratching at her nose ring, still pink and fresh. She’d popped across the colorful market street on her lunch break to the tattoo shop and returned with a souvenir. 

“Shouldn’t you be off-” she waved her hand vaguely. “-folding flannel shirts or deconstructing the symbolism of communism in The Lord of the Rings trilogy or something?” 

Thomas held up a hand in warning. “Hey. ‘Smaug or Stalin: Communism under the Lonely Mountain’ is my masterpiece and I will not have it slandered.” Brenda snorted in response. 

Tucked into the first floor of a crumbling semi-detached Victorian home, Scorched Earth second hand clothing had started as a part-time job to help with his unavoidable lack of funds back in first year, and had quickly devolved into somewhere that he could do his homework, occasionally sell a bright print shirt or jerkin jacket, and, most importantly, hang out with Brenda. 

“Besides, shouldn’t _you_ be off, like, splitting the atom in a different way or inventing rocket fuel or something?” He countered while absently throwing a sweat stained sweater into the discard bin. Brenda shrugged with a quirked eyebrow, turning to ring up a customer and then promptly talking them out of the sale. (“Dude. Uh-huh. No way. You can do much better than this shirt. Oh-dinosaurs? I’ve got dinosaurs. Here, come with me, I’ve got a better dino print in the back. Should’ve come straight to me, rookie mistake. How do you feel about tassels?”) 

The blustery sun-drenched Saturday poured into the small clothing store, dust motes catching and dancing in the light. Drawing both locals of the market as well as tourists. Never overtly busy, the steady flow helped, at least, to pass the time. And helped Thomas keep his mind off a certain golden-haired angel of death. 

The eccentricity of the owner of Scorched, a terrifying man called Jorge that Thomas couldn’t quite figure out was apparent throughout the space. Piles of clothes hung and stacked in a semi-balance of order, and milk crates being used as shelves were dispersed with old Victorian cabinets, as well as clothing racks welded together out of lead pipes. Thomas was fairly sure that the framed painting that hung crooked over the wall behind the cash was an original Picasso. 

Saturday’s also meant that they were, for the most part, unsupervised. Jorge has some kind of standing appointment that took him from the shop from noon until closing and Thomas had never quite been able to get out of Brenda what it was exactly he did. She gave him a variety of answers based on her mood and the most recent book she’d read. Tango class. Paint ball practice. He managed an intramural football team. Secret agent. 

These extended absences also often times led to Brenda and Thomas daring each other into increasingly escalating situations, especially when business was slow. “Bet you couldn’t put on every coat in the store at once.” Thomas had challenged. (She’d gotten stuck.). 

“Bet you couldn’t eat seven churros in two minutes.” She’d countered. (Thomas has reorganized the entire shoe section and then promptly crawled under the register to sleep off the sugar crash.) 

Ten minutes from closing the door opened, a breeze ruffling Thomas’s hair as he sat on the stool by the register, absentmindedly doodling some skulls and crossbones on a forgotten receipt. Turning to remind whoever had the audacity to walk in ten minutes before close, that they were, in fact, about to close, he gets a look at the two and Thomas smiles instead. 

“Teresa, Minho, what’re you guys doing here?” 

Brenda materialized next to Thomas as quickly as if she’d been teleported there. Teresa tucked a strand of dark chestnut hair behind her ear, grinning at the two of them. Thomas had almost wept with joy when his best friend since childhood and for a brief time, girlfriend, had announced that she’d be going to the same university as him. Thomas had stuck to her like a snail on a leaf for the first month of school and to this day credited her for all of his most mature qualities.

“Newt texted. Told us to bring tacos.” She held up a large paper bag. “And to pick you two up along the way.” 

“I’m not just some taco afterthought.” Brenda said frumpily. 

Teresa smiles. “Bren you don’t want to come?” 

The response was instantaneous. “Oh, no, I’m definitely coming.” 

While Brenda and Thomas rushed their close Minho and Teresa picked through the bins of clothes like archeologists on the hunt, trying their best to find the most ridiculous article of clothing the other would have to wear on their next date. A contest that had started between them roughly three hours into Thomas’s first shift at the store. Gally, Minho’s long-suffering boyfriend, did _not_ approve. 

They went to their bar, the four of them. Newt and Sonya and Gally guarding the large booth on the ivy-covered bricked in back patio like feral dogs over a kill. “Harriet’s on her way, but she says no promises that she won’t fall asleep on the table.” Sonya cautioned. They piled in, all of them, a massive living tangle of legs under the table and hands grasping glasses in the cool autumn evening. 

The glowing lights strung up all around seeming to laugh along with them as the night grew dark. True to her word, Harriet showed up wearing her scrub shirt and jeans and promptly fell asleep on Sonya’s shoulder. Sonya gave her med school suffering girlfriend a kiss on the forehead and adjusted her massive infinity scarf into a better pillow for her other half. 

Tables filled with the clink of glasses and cheerful voices. It was Saturday night, mid-terms were winding down and the young people of the city trickled through the bar celebrating freedom from exams and papers. Speaking of celebrating- “Fry! When’s your shift done?” Teresa asked louder than necessary. (Her inside voice disappearing more and more with each drink.)

“Ten minutes.” Fry said, grinning his shining grin.

“So now? Excellent.” She said pulling the laughing boy down next to her. The addition only served to squish bodies tighter together, and the resulting tightness had Newt throwing his arm casually over the back of the bench and _holy shit holy shit_ across Thomas’s shoulders. He fought down his blush and turned to look at Newt who was sporting a playful light in his eyes. 

“S’alright Tommy?” Newt said low, the steadily drunker chatter of their friends covering the exchange. 

“I’ll allow it.” Thomas teased and Newt’s lips quirked like he was fighting back a smile. Thomas ended up crashing at Newt’s apartment for a number of reasons. The way Minho and Gally were looking at each other, and then Minho pointedly looking at Thomas, was one of them. 

Another was the fact that when he stumbled on the front steps outside the bar, sufficiently drunk and giddy, Newt’s hand had slid to his back to steady and guild him and Thomas had been powerless but to follow. 

-

Thomas woke the next morning with a slight hangover and a distinct buzzing in his ears, squinting against the light streaming through the window. Pulling the thick hand crocheted blanket (a gift from Newt and Sonya’s father) over his head he burrowed deeper into the warmth of the leather couch, trying to ignore the consistent buzzing and fall back asleep.

There was a crash. “Shitfuckety_bollocks_.” Accompanying the sound. Nope. Thomas was awake. 

Thomas popped his head up. Newt was stumbling from his room, long sweatshirt that hung to the ripped knees of his jeans, trying his best to shove his feet into his shoes. Grasping in a failed attempt to pick up the vibrating flip phone on the counter. Ah. The buzzing. Newt succeeded in wrapping his fingers around the phone, flipping it open, reading for a second. Hanging loosely from his fingers was his thurible. His scythe tucked up under his elbow. 

He noticed Thomas noticing him. 

“Oh. Hey.” Newt said snapping the phone closed definitively. 

Thomas’s eyes widened in understanding. Newt was going out to, well, go out. “Hey.” He said back. 

“Are you...” Thomas trailed off. 

“Uh. Yeah. Yeah.” Newt avoided his eye, grabbing his car keys for his old beat up white Cadillac. 

“Where?” Thomas asks, not knowing why he is asking. Picking at a cuticle. 

“Oh. Uh. Just-“ he waved vaguely over his shoulder. “The suburbs.” 

“Oh.” 

The was a moment of silence, a tiny shiver in the liquid warm early Sunday light. 

“Can I come?” Thomas asks. 

-

They slide across the drowsy city like a sigh. Thomas with his feet propped up on the dash, reclining and searching his music, a song drifting through the speakers and making Newt smile, hands hanging limply from the steering wheel. “This was that song in your third year, the one from that album you were obsessed with.” Newt says. 

The tightly packed streets of the metropolis melted slowly into long wide roads and strip malls. Town houses flattening out into sprawling bungalows and box driveways, everything blurry and surreal. They’d left a city that was stirring to life, but the subdivisions and neighborhoods were still sleeping. 

Time seemed to move slower out here, thick as molasses and just as bitter sweet as the childhood it represented. All the colors washed out and pastel and there is a grainy quality to the suburbs that reminds him of old home movies. Thomas thought of his high school days and old life hundreds of miles away with a smile. Him and Teresa and all their friends drifting, killing time in a landscape almost identical to this one. 

Thomas snorted. “Yeah, it was always weird how funny you found it. Now I know.” Newt fought against his smile, failed. 

“It almost killed me. I wanted to tell you right then.” 

Thomas’s eyebrows rose. “Really?” Newt chuckled. 

“Mhm.” 

Their friendship had been instantaneous and felt, in some ways, preordained. Hours of passing notes in a dark lecture hall, drawings of space ships and complaints about essays and long, long walks that went nowhere except for soul-baring conversations. Thomas introducing Newt to Minho, both of them to Teresa. Sonya bouncing into step with them quickly. How Newt and Thomas would eat in diners at four a.m, or sit out on Newt’s fire escape. Thomas’s first cigarette outside a club, coughing and hacking, three shots deep and rebellious, Newt next to him trying not to collapse with laughter, slapping him on the back. 

Years ticking by in snapshots. Minho showing up one day towing a frowning man, roughly their age, blushing for the first time in living memory. Newt’s desolation at his break up with Alby, wrapping himself in blankets and snapping at everyone for weeks. Harriet getting into med school, how that night they’d gotten so drunk in celebration that Teresa had shown them all her skill of being able to walk on her hands. Newt’s graduation, gold hair spilling out of his cap and looking like a piece of art in the warm sun up on the stage. Thomas’s fingers twitching, wanting to reach out and lace them with Newt. Instead Thomas reaching up to loosen his own bow tie, throat tight. 

“How does it work?” Thomas asked, softly curious. Taking a sip of his drive-through coffee. 

Newt smiled. “It’s honestly a lot less dramatic than you think. Things just kind of work out. There’s always a parking spot right outside, or my train is never late. People just sort of...stop noticing me when I’m getting close. They’re eyes slide right over me.” He stares out the windshield for a moment, and Thomas watches him with large eyes. 

“And then you just...” Thomas trailed off. 

Newt turns towards Thomas and for a split second it looks like he is glowing. Shimmering smoke wrapping around him, sparkling like dust caught in a splash of sunbeam. Thomas’s breath hitches in his chest and something inside of him cracks as he watches Newt’s eyes turn gold in a trick of the light. Or maybe something more. When Newt speaks his words are soft and ancient. 

“And then I take their hand.” 

Exactly as Newt had said, a parking spot was waiting for them outside the suburban bungalow, a few cars parked closely together along the curb. “Be right back.” Newt says, reaching behind him to fish his tools out of the back seat. Swinging his scythe over his shoulder. His thurible rattling softly, as if it is excited. 

Thomas watches as Newt slips along the sidewalk towards a house with a couple talking quietly on the porch, neither of them taking notice of him, even as he climbs the steps. Just as he reaches the front door it opens and a second woman steps outside to embrace the man, both their shoulders shaking. Newt slides past her as if he is made of air, moving like a shade into the house. And then he is gone. 

-

After, Newt drops him off at his apartment leaning out of the car window with a smile and a yawn. Something between them has shifted in the dreamscape of the morning. “I’ll see you later?” He asked. 

“Yeah. Soon?” Thomas breaths. Newt nods. 

Sonya and Newt host a Halloween party, the apartment filling with spider webs and a smoke machine pumping out cyan clouds that hung at their feet, making it appear as if all of them floating in the dense vapors. Lollipops made up like bouquets of flowers in mason jars everywhere. Newt constantly replacing them in his mouth as he devoured them. In a massive crystal bowl that looked like something out of a sixties department store was a light green drink that popped and bubbled and tasted of peppermint, the flavor refreshing and bright without being sickly sweet. “Where’d the hell you get that?” Gally asked happily after a sip. Sonya hid her smile in Harriet’s hair. 

“Mum got it for us on one of her business trips.” Newt offered simply. Thomas coughing mid-drink.  
-

“It’s snowing.” Teresa says a few weeks later, staring out the frosted windows of the Trinity. Thomas looked up, chin propped on his hand. Exams looming on the horizon and it felt like, if anything, his second last semester was barreling forward at break neck speed. 

Teresa buried her hands in her hair, looking down at her laptop in agony. “I just don’t know what she means with this thesis statement. We barely covered Plath, why’s she the final? I can’t write about a door handle for three pages.” 

“Hey I booked our tickets home.” He offered instead and she nodded, blowing on her hot chocolate. She traced his face knowingly with her eyes. The sounds of the cafe swelled around them. Mugs knocking on hardwood. The rustle of pages being turned and high lighters being uncapped. Students commiserating in sorrow, moaning over caffeinated and alcoholic drinks alike. Thomas saw a young couple coloring on their thumbs with pen before pressing them against a piece of paper, folding it up and tucking in in a random book from the shelf. Smiling love struck at each other as one of them replaced the volume. 

“Are you excited?” She asked him, and Thomas turned, focusing on the sparse drifting flakes outside. Leave it to Teresa to instantly pick up on his trepidation. 

“Yeeeeaaaaaaah.” He drew out. Very convincingly. A good cover. He could play this off. He turned and plucked a Polaroid stuck under a flower vase, looking at the photo absentmindedly. A blurry outline of two figures, one giving the other a piggyback. Thomas smiles and put it back under the vase for someone else to enjoy. 

He _was_ excited. He was excited to see his parents and excited to eat organic food and reminisce with their old friends. Drift into the warm embrace of the familiarity of his childhood home and sights and sounds. He was most excited to see his kid brother Chuck, the teenager almost catatonic with joy at the fact that Thomas would be there to sit in the stands of his hockey tournament finals. Thomas was excited. 

But. 

But three days ago Thomas and Newt had shared a joint while they watched 2001: A Space Odyssey for one of his classes, the two of them sprawled on the couch. “You know-“ Newt had said, exhaling smoke. “I think they’re onto something here.” Thomas propped himself up with great effort. The room slowly becoming a foggy jungle of cloying smoke and plants. Thomas’s mind filled with flowers and glitter and the urge to brush Newt’s hair back from his forehead. 

“How so?” Thomas asked, words falling from his mouth and tumbling over his chin. Newt shifted, the bloodshot in his eyes bringing out the amber lurking within them. 

“The Monolith is _clearly_ used as a tool created by an alien race that has been through many stages of evolution, moving from organic form to biomechanical, and finally achieving a state of pure energy.” He said before eating a handful of popcorn, crunching smugly. 

Thomas blinked. “You got that from Wikipedia you dick.” 

Newt looked at him sideways. “Tommy, it’s a screaming rock in space, no one really knows what the fuck is going on here and if they say they do, they’re lying.” He responded with a pucker. And, well, after that they had been laughing too hard for much else, and Thomas was definitely going to have to watch the movie again because all he could take in was the way that Newt’s lips moved as he chuckled. 

They had fallen asleep and Thomas had woken up in the dark, glow from the tv casting everything in a faint cerulean blue. They had shifted in the night, tangling together on the sofa. Thomas’s head resting on Newt’s chest, feeling wiry arms wrapped around him tightly. 

Newt was always cold. Always, always cold. Even in the height of summer he was never without a sweater tied low around his waist, a flannel shirt slung across one shoulder and ready to be pulled on. Sonya was the same, with her layered dresses and tights and thigh high socks and long cardigans. A scarf always at arms length. Thomas wondered vaguely if it was just a sibling thing, or something to do with their line of work. In the dark room Thomas lay on Newt’s chest and convinced himself to stay there and fall back asleep, because, of course, otherwise Newt would be cold. Obviously. And if he inhaled, once, deeply with his nose buried in Newt’s shirt then, well.

“I’m excited to go home.” Thomas said to Teresa in the cafe, picking at a stray hair on his waffle shirt. _But I’m going to miss him_. The words dissolving on his tongue like caramel. She looked at him with a raised brow for a moment before turning back to her paper. 

-

Thomas entered his cold dark apartment like a zombie, bumping into the end table as he dropped his keys and wallet in the ‘don’t forget’ bowl. “Shit sorry.” He muttered to the inanimate object, because his parents had raised him right. Freedom would feel a lot sweeter if he hadn’t been up studying for the last twenty hours. He would celebrate the end of his exams and the start of winter break after a fucking nap. 

His apartment was clearly empty. Minho must still be on campus, and Thomas took the silence as an invitation. He wandered to his room, not bothering to close the door. Kicking off his shoes as he stumbled, thinking only of a nap. All the information he’d crammed into his weeping caffeine fueled brain spilling out like a sandbag with a leak. Thomas wrapped himself in his comforter still fully clothed and he was asleep the minute his head hit the pillow. He dreamt of gold smoke and long pale fingers. 

“Tommy?” A whisper. Gentle.

Thomas groaned, feeling himself frown. There was a laugh, quiet and smooth as velvet. “Tommy.” A hand on his shoulder. 

“Wazit?” Thomas said, untangling himself from his comforter somewhat unsuccessfully, trying to free his head and shoulders from the twisted blanket, blinking. Looking up. 

Newt was leaning over him, glow from the hall light throwing him in soft relief, smiling down. Perfect lips turning up at the corners. Skin the color of moonlight, luminescent. Brown eyes like grace. 

_Is this what they see? _ He wonders.

Thomas rubbed his eyes, yawning, already losing the though as he struggled to alertness. “Hey Newt. What time is it?” He rasped out, voice thick and rough from sleep. Newts hand on his shoulder gave a gentle squeeze. 

“Teresa and I are here. Teresa’s making feijoada.” And true to his words delicious smells of bubbling spices and a blade chopping against a cutting board reached him. He heard Teresa humming softly. As if prompted by the thought of food, his stomach grumbles like a landslide, making Newt snort. “Come on.” He offered a hand to Thomas, cold fingers slipping into warm ones. “What in god’s name would you do without us Tommy?” 

Thomas yawned again, stretching as he walked towards the cheerful sounds of a busy kitchen. “Probably die, so we still would’ve met.” He teased. Newt looked shocked, and for a split-second Thomas thought he’d overstepped, until Newt burst out laughing. 

“That’s fucked up Tommy.” 

“What’s fucked up?” Teresa asked as she stirred a simmering pot on the stove, strands escaping her ponytail. 

“Oh.” Newt said casually, gesturing to Thomas. “All of this.” 

Teresa wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Well we knew that already.”

When Minho stumbled home half an hour later, looking roughly as worn down as Thomas felt, until he sniffed the air, eyes lighting up. “Oh my god, Teresa’s making feijoada?” 

Teresa laughed, handing him a steaming bowl of food. 

“You are my favorite person.” Minho declared forcefully. 

She accepts this with a nod as she ties her hair back again. “Better not tell Gal.” 

Minho started shoveling food in his mouth before he’d even sat down. When asked about his exam he grunted, the other three nodding in mutual understanding. Sometimes all you could do was grunt. 

“When do you guys leave?” Minho asked after the feeding frenzy had become markedly less frenzied. Teresa grinned. Thomas tried to copy, expression lukewarm. 

“Two days. Mom’s already talking about having Thomas’s family over for dinner.” She said. Thomas smiled but stayed quiet, stabbing at an errant piece of food. 

“You guys need a lift to the airport?” Newt asked casually. They did. 

And two days later, standing in the drop-off area next to the departures gate Thomas wondered if it was a good idea. Airports were romantic. Christmas was romantic. Airports and Christmas and angels of death lifting Teresa’s overstuffed suitcase out of his beat-up car’s trunk turned out, also, to be romantic. Newt and Teresa shared a warm hug, wrapping their arms around each other and squeezing tightly. “Back in time for New Years yeah?” Newt teased. Teresa nodded. 

“You and Sonya and Harriet are all gonna be so tanned. It’s going to kill me.” Teresa moaned. The three of them were going to Hawaii, Newt and Sonya’s parents treat. Thomas tried not to think of Newt lounging out on the sand, stretched out, hair damp from the ocean. What it would feel like to press lips to the skin under Newt’s jaw, salty from the water. 

Teresa took her suitcase, and Thomas’s for good measure. “I’m gonna go get us checked in while you two say bye.” She spun away before either could speak. Leaving them alone. 

Thomas blushed, tongue thick in his mouth, shifting from foot to foot. Insides feeling like they were shivering despite his thick jean jacket. Wondering when it had started to get hard to look his best friend in the eye without blushing. “Uh.” He cleared his throat. Tension between them like a held note of music. “Bring me a lay?” Thomas joked, watching Newt’s face work through shock, dawning realization (maybe _oh my god maybe_ bashfulness) and then a groaning chuckle. 

“That was bad Tommy.” He chided. Thomas shrugged. Newt looked at him, affection shinning in his eyes. The air around them changing, growing thick. He smiled, took a step forward. Thomas’s heart sped up, his chin tilting towards Newt’s face. 

“FLIGHT 235 TO NEW YORK HAS BEEN DELAYED.” Came the screaming announcement from the speaks overhead. The quiet bubble they had created popping instantly. Suddenly taxis honked, tires screeched, families frantically checked bags for passports and blankies (“IF MOO MOO ISNT HERE IM NOT GOING.” screamed the toddler.). There was a strong smell of petroleum. Decidedly, and suddenly, very unromantic. 

Newt signed, running a hand through his hair, his telltale sign of frustration. He grinned, biting his cheek once before wrapping his arms soundly around Thomas, pulling him in and holding tight, Thomas doing the same instinctually. Getting a faint smell of Newt’s scent, warm like honey and just a hint of smoke. He tells himself not to breathe deeply. (He does anyways.)

Thomas did, end up, enjoying himself. Chuck tackled him to the ground the minute he stepped out of the gate of the airport. His parent’s warm hugs enveloping him and making him feel small despite his mother’s protests over how tall he had gotten, horrified it seemed by how he was still growing. He slept (a lot) and ate (even more, devouring his father’s home cooking like a hyena at a zebra carcass.). For Christmas, he got his parents a set of rare books and Chuck a comic anthology he’d been yelling about. And tucked in Thomas’s closet back at his apartment was a small package wrapped in a deep violet paper. Visions of pale fingers carefully unfolding the creases played through his mind.

He went out for drinks with Aris and Rachel and Teresa and all their old high school friends and it was familiar and warm. But there was a moment that his and Teresa’s eyes locked over the table and din of chatter and they smiled knowingly at each other. The memories here were good, but they were just that. Memories. 

Their lives were back home now. One they had painted for themselves with the broad strokes of Minho’s laughs, lines of bright colored pencil like Sonya and Harriet’s chipped cups, sharp charcoal shading in the shape Brenda’s smile. Newt, a shimmering layer of gold dust covering all of it, the canvas, the city, lighting everything up. Making every day ordinary things seem, to Thomas at least, a bit like magic.

It was good, yes, to visit back here, where his childhood had been. But it wasn’t home. Not anymore. 

-

They didn’t bother going to their apartments, bringing their suitcases right to The Trinity with them. Clearly, from the piles of luggage and duffle bags around tables, they weren’t the only ones. All over the bar friends and families built over nights out (at bars, like this one, at cheap diners and in parks, bottles of alcohol tilted between legs.) and nights in (weed smoke drifting and thick full laughter and a movie playing in the background.) were reuniting. “Oh my god you’re so tanned I _do_ hate you.” Teresa moaned flopping down in the booth next to Brenda. Sonya tried not to look particularly smug, failing, stretching out and pushing up the sleeves of her large sweater dress to show off her forearms. 

“Oooooohh.” Brenda said appreciably. 

“Ahhhhhhh.” Minho said to tease Brenda. Gally being hit with a sugar packet in response, collateral damage under friendly fire.

Teresa groaned again, burying her face in her arms. “I can’t believe classes start in a week.” And _that_ was something they could all agree on, the group enthusiastically turning to the complaint worthy topic. 

Thomas didn’t contribute, considering he was busy trying to get his heart to start beating again. Because, really, what the fuck. Newt was sitting there, skin looking like it had been dusted with bronze, the sunlight bringing out his natural highlights in messy almost-waves. Arms crossed, eyes running up and down Thomas in a way that made his chest hot. What the fuck. And, once more, what the actual fuck. 

Newt grinned at him, lips rose pink and defined by the shades of sun covered skin. “Hey Tommy.” Thomas watched the way they moved around his name like a kiss. 

Thomas sat down next to him, too close. ‘_I missed you so much_.’ He didn’t say. “Hi.” He said back, the single syllable breathless. ‘_I fell asleep at night and wished you were there with me_.’ He didn’t add. 

Newt leaned in, closer than too close. “Got you something.” His breath ghosting against Thomas’s neck. He shivered. Newt dug under the booth, and when his hand came back up a lay was hanging from a single finger. The bright flower necklace held together by filmy tourist plastic. Newt’s lips quivered. Thomas burst out laughing, Newt following him down, heads bent together in conspiracy. 

“What we miss?” Brenda asked Teresa, going out of her way to bump their wrists together. 

Teresa fought back a smile of her own. “God only knows.” 

Sonya grinned, wicked, catching Thomas’s eye. “More like the devil.” Thomas spat out his beer and Newt popped a french fry in his mouth, grinning. 

-

On New Year’s Eve Thomas and Minho threw a party. (Partially because it was criminal how much they were all at Sonya and Newt’s and partially because Sonya and Newt’s apartment was too nice to wreck.) All through the night Thomas would catch Newt staring at him, in his tight black jeans and one-button-undone collared shirt. Whenever their eyes locked Thomas would feel a flutter of nerves and check the clock. 

He drank a bit more, just a tiny bit more than usual to give him liquid courage, and then a tiny bit after that and then, quite suddenly, he was absolutely wasted by 11 pm. “I messed it all up.” Thomas moaned as Minho and Newt deposited him on his bed, falling onto the mattress and rolling onto his stomach.

Minho laughed, decidedly missing the point. “Well I mean, at least it’s our own bathroom that you barfed your guts in. So you get to clean _up_ the mess tomorrow.” He patted Thomas’s shoulder and Thomas grumbled, trying to swat him away and missing. Minho laughed again, loud and infectious. Newt couldn’t help but join in. 

“You got him? I gotta go play host.” 

“No worries mate, be right out.” Newt called back. 

“I messed’d it up.” Thomas mumbled, world spinning, already feeling the tug of drunken sleep. Newt laughed again, pulling the covers up over him and tucking them under his chin.

“I dunno how you sleep on your stomach like that, my neck would fall off.”

“Like it.” Thomas sighed, mostly asleep. Newt let out a low chuckle. 

“Happy New Year’s Tommy.” Newt whispered in his ear, and a second later cool lips pressed a gentle kiss against his overheated cheek. Thomas made a happy noise deep in his throat. 

When Thomas blinked himself awake in the morning with a pounding headache and a mouth as dry as the desert he remembered nothing. But still, the first thing he did when he woke was touch his fingers to his cheek.


	2. Grave Situations pt. 2

January brought blustery winds and freezing rain, long miserable walks from class in the dark that usually ended with all of them piling into chairs and the large leather couch and blankets and pillows on the floor of Sonya and Newt’s apartment, drinking cheap wine and watching old movies that Thomas recommends. They spent the majority of their time there, a constant revolving door of friends that wandered in and out daily.

Minho and his’s place was nice enough, as nice as all purely buy-to-build student’s apartment could be. But you knew the minute you stepped into this place. Sonya and Newt’s apartment was a home. The way that brick mixed with wood, every surface covered in plants and books and chipped dishes. The way that there was always leftovers in the fridge, an open bottle of wine on the counter. Candles burnt down and replaced on top of the melted wax continuously. How rough cut and smooth stones and gems littered the end tables and bookshelves. 

“Man my girl Hepburn knows how to warble.” Brenda offered from her spot on the couch, cheeks flushed from mulled wine. (And maybe, Thomas thought, the fact that Teresa was sitting next to her, head resting on Brenda’s shoulder.)

-

There were hints of what Newt was, things of no note in everyday life that together formed a huge shimmering shadow that the tall blonde would sometimes drift into. Only to return to the real world with a dusting of gold flecks and an ancient bright light in his eyes. 

There was a week where everything seemed to go wrong for Minho. Gally and him had a huge fight about nothing, he was late to work three times, forgot that a paper was due. When they were at the bar, Minho bemoaning his horrible luck, Thomas noticed Newt tuck a small chain into Minho’s coat pocket when he’d gone to get the next round of drinks. “Pretty sure he picked up an imp somewhere.” Newt had said in explanation, tucking the small brass necklace deeper in Minho’s parka. “They hate crude metals like copper.” Newt added and Thomas had nodded along wisely, despite the fact that holy hell apparently imps existed too.

When they went thrifting in the market, on the hunt for the perfect jean jacket for Thomas, (churros in hand by Newt’s insistence, sickly sweet and dripping chocolate.) they had stumbled upon a cobbler’s with repaired shoes in the window. “Look at those.” He had said, and Thomas looked, seeing only a pair of slightly worn doc martins, a paper price tag attached to a lace. (30$-) Thomas had turned to him confused. 

“They’re shoes Newt.” He laughed, his breath a puff of frost.

Newt had taken Thomas’s hand, tangling their fingers together with a smile. Making Thomas’s heart stop in the process. “Now look.” He whispered low in Thomas’s ear. Goosebumps broke out on the skin of his neck where the breath of Newt’s words skated across. Thomas looked. And looked. 

The previously unassuming shoes now glowed a soft navy, as if lit up from the fabrics very essence. A faint pulsing shine that instantly reminded Thomas of the bioluminescent moss that sometimes grew in caves deep down, buried in the earth. Fingers laced with Newt’s, feeling something like electricity under the pad of his thumb. The current of the occult running through the points of contact. The veil of the world under this one pulled back just for a moment with a touch. 

Newt was lending Thomas his magic. 

“Why?” Thomas breathes staring transfixed at the shade of blue that shifted and changed, moving between light and dark like the tides pulled by the moon. If he tried for twenty years he wouldn’t be able to duplicate it on film. 

Newt smiled, tweaking his wrist and pulling Thomas closer so their shoulders bumped. “Sometimes little bits of people get attached to objects that are important to them. Things that have significance in their lives. They pass on, but that piece of them stays, not lost, just an imprint. A happy thing. A feeling of them that lives on, forever.” 

“Why a pair of shoes?” Thomas asks.

Newt shrugs. “Could be anything really. Maybe they were just a favorite pair. Maybe they backpacked all around the world in them. Maybe those shoes were the shoes they were wearing the night they met the love of their life, who knows?” 

Thomas turned, staring at Newt. _Now? _ He asks with his eyes.

Newt broke the locked gaze first, turning back to the window display. Humming once. Pulling Thomas forward down the street to trip after him. He had been wearing his beat-up vans, the ones that Minho had doodled a lady bug on, the first day he met Newt.

-

On one night a thick layer of snow blanketed the city, soaking boots and chilling the back of necks. Thomas stomped and slipped and pushed his way through the knee-high powder, shoulders hunched against the wind, intent on his destination. 

Entering the warm glow of Sonya and Newt’s apartment is like stepping into a different dimension, the tip of his nose and cheeks smarting from the drastic change in temperature. He fought for a solid ten minutes with his jacket and scarf before padding over to the large wood island that his friends were gathered around. Playfully trying to shove his icicle fingers under the neck of Newt’s hoodie. 

Newt shoving his hands away, a screech of “TOMMY.” Exploding from his mouth the second the chilled appendages touched his skin, Thomas laughing. 

Newt dropping Thomas’s hands, as if he couldn’t bare their temperate. “You absolute bugger.” 

Thomas chucked again. “You know you get extra British when you’re pissed? It’s so fucking cute dude.” 

Newt blinked, and suddenly was blushing. Which was very interesting. 

“Just don’t go throwing my tea in the lake.” He grumbled. 

With an explosion of sound Teresa seated next to him let out a massive sneeze, eyes and nose red and irritated. She sniffed, scowling at Thomas when he winced in sympathy. 

“Still with the cold? Just go to the doctor. You’re a friggin biohazard.” He nagged, leaning away for effect. 

“I’m fine.” She said, voice scratchy. Brenda and Sonya both raised their eyebrows from their spot next to the stove, something that smelled like cloves and cinnamon bubbling in a massive brass pot. Steam rising between them. 

“Yeah. You sound like you’re in the peak of health. You wanna go run a marathon?” Brenda teased. Sonya nudged her and wordlessly gestured for Brenda to add a amber liquid from a small clear jar. Brenda did so, absentmindedly letting the thick liquid drip into the herbal remedy. 

“Uh.” Brenda said. The simmering concoction in the pot turned a deep glowing green. The group fell silent like a curtain dropping. Staring at the pot. Teresa sniffed, breaking the silence. Every eye turned to her for a moment and she shrugged unapologetically. 

“Uh.” Brenda repeated. “Sonya what the hell was in that bottle?” 

Sonya pushes forward, eyebrows furrowed in confusion, leaning over the pot. Speaking more to herself than the others. “Literally just wildflower honey. It shouldn’t have reacted like that. Unless-“ she turned to Newt, mutual expressions of dawning realization. They turned as one to Brenda. 

“Brenda, where did you say your parents were from?” Newt asked, tone overtly casual. 

Brenda looked at them, mouth pulled down in a frown. “France and Brazil, why?” 

Sonya and Newt turned to each other, speaking in unison. “Roma.”

Brenda blinked, looked at Thomas and Teresa. “Either if you two have a single fucking clue of what’s going on?” They shook their heads. 

“Brenda-“ Sonya started. 

“-Listen.” Newt continued. 

Forty-seven minutes and three large whiskey sours later (“Don’t skimp on the bitters.” Brenda says faintly.) Brenda sat on the large couch, Teresa holding one of her hands, both of them looking at Newt and Sonya with eyes as large as dinner plates. Thomas trying to discreetly stay in the kitchen. “You’re, deaths? And. I’m a witch?” Brenda asked, voice oddly high. She tucked a strand of chin length hair behind her ears. 

Newt nodded, raising a finger. “Technically-“ 

“No one told you?” Sonya asked with a concerned frown, cutting her brother and his apparent favorite catch phrase off. 

The recently discovered possessor of powers shrugged. “It’s just me and Jorge. He wouldn’t have known.” She stated matter-of-fact. It was quite, all of them digesting the knowledge. Thomas noticed Teresa squeeze her hand, lightly, just once. 

Brenda threw the hand that wasn’t laced in Teresa’s up in the air. “Alright. Fuck it. I’m a witch.” 

Newt’s eyebrows rose, the first time his calming persona had cracked throughout the entire explanation. From Sonya’s equally disbelieving expression they’d clearly expected a lot more denial. 

“Just like that?” Sonya asked, pulling at the collar of her bright green knit sweater. 

Brenda shrugged and drained her drink. “You spend your life being raised by Jorge, you learn to go with the flow.” 

Thomas nodded in understanding. “Yeah, okay. That checks out.” 

There was a creak as the door opened, the group of them turning in silence to watch Harriet drag herself over the threshold. Scrubs splattered in purple like she’d fought life and death in a paintball match. “You will not _believe_ what happened to me in my ER trial toda-“ She took in their mixed expressions, the bubbling glowing green pot on the stove and Brenda’s flushed cheeks with a resigned sigh. “Just _once_ I’d like to be able to say, ‘No guys, _my_ day was the weirdest.’ And have it be true.”

-

The snake that wrapped itself around Sonya was white as fresh snow, almost blinding in its luminance. Like spots on a leopard there were tiny flower patterns, intricate and looking as if they were painted on, somehow, amazingly, a natural pattern formed by the pink and red scales mixed in-between with white. 

“Uh.” Thomas said with raised eyebrows from his spot in the doorway. “That wasn’t here before.” 

Sonya pets the snakes head lovingly and the snake’s eyes close in enjoyment, tongue flicking in pleasure. “Because she had to hide from you dummy.” 

“Sonya that snake is not normal.” Thomas said, voice an octave higher than usual. 

She pouted and stuck out her tongue. “Leave Lazarus alone, she’s beautiful.” Sonya put the snake-Lazarus-he corrected himself, down. Draping her around a coat stand that Thomas privately swore to never use again. The white and floral snake wrapped itself around the arms happily, watching them with large button black eyes. 

“She’s something alright.” Thomas acknowledged. “Newt here?” He asked while snagging a cookie from the plate on the wood island counter. Brushing a few crumbs off of a half-drawn moon chart that sat next to a textbook on anatomy. He sniffed the steam rising from the chipped purple tea pot. Smelling mint. Newt’s. 

“He just got buzzed but he’ll be back soon.” Sonya called over her shoulder, teetering on a stool as she reached up to water one of the many hanging plants that were suspended around the apartment. 

“Here-“ Thomas said while hurrying over. “Lemme help.” He steadied the chair by holding it. 

Sonya grinned down at him and the massive scarf she had piled up around her shoulders tickled his nose. She looked around the room, the sunlight streaming in through the many windows that seemed to almost defy structural integrity. “Thomas my friend, you’ve just volunteered for quite the journey.” 

So they watered the plants. 

The sea of green that was Newt and Sonya’s apartment unfolded before him as they moved slowly through the space. The living room was by far the biggest challenge. Long creeping vines hanging meters down bookshelves from the pots placed on top. The end table ferns by the large sink-into-it-and-never-get-out deep cracked leather couch. The bay window ledge seat filled with sunlight-needy flowers. Cactuses tucked in old tea cups (“Only a drop for the red one.” Sonya had cautioned.) Tiny singular daisies shoved into salt shakers next to herbs growing wild on a rack directly next to the stove. 

In the bathroom there were bamboo plants in glass and bowls decorated with colorful pebbles amidst the beeswax soap bars and Thomas noticed the now familiar scent of Newt. Sweet and smoky. A tall snake plant in a brown ceramic pot on the windowsill next to the shower. 

Sonya waved him away from the bonsai tree on her desk in her bedroom. Looking at it for almost a full minute before taking tiny sewing scissors and clipping one solitary leaf. She picked it up gently and placed it in a glass beaker, closing it with a corked lid. “For Harriet. She’s been working so hard for her residency. They’re good for fatigue.” She explained while tucking the jar into the deep pockets of her long sweater.

Instead Thomas set to work on the others. The moss terrarium on the end table, the tall palm tree in the corner. The other various flowers tucked away on shelves and in any receptacle Sonya could get her hands on. 

Sonya looked around with a satisfied smile and blew a sigh out of full lips. “Okay. Did it.” She turned to Thomas with laughing eyes. “Last one’s in Newt’s room, do you mind?” 

Thomas nodded, blushing. Turning sharply around and walking back to his goal. The space of Newt’s room felt different now. They had always been friends, _best_ friends, but Thomas knowing his secret had led to all of his boundaries fluttering to the ground like lace. Over the past few months they had grown closer (they were _so_ close) and Thomas could feel it, being completely comfortable in a space that was so intimately Newt’s.

Next to his laptop was the black candle that sat half burnt by his bedside table, the wax turning gold where it had melted and started to drip. The framed picture of Minho, Newt, Teresa and Thomas from third year when they had taken a road trip to the beach over spring break. His bass guitar picks mixing in a small bowl with spare change and chunks of rough cut onyx. 

Saw how his thurible holder sat unassuming on his desk, waiting for Newt’s return, glowing softly. Thomas reached out, touching it. Warm under the pads of his fingers. I.D card tossed carelessly on his unmade bed, the sheets rumpled. He traced his hand along the edge, the fabric cold, as if the ghost of Newt’s sleeping form had left a chill. A slight indent in a pillow where his head had laid, gold waves mused and messy from sleep. Newt had slept here, his chest rising and falling evenly, long lashes fluttering against cheeks. The thought filling Thomas with warmth like mulled wine.

There was a creak of wood and Thomas turned, noticing Newt for the first time. Leaning against the door, arms crossed. Thurible hanging from its chain wrapped around his fingers, the smoke a bubbly floating candy floss pink today. He felt his heart swoop and turn, tumbling down from his chest and into his stomach. Watching the way the orange light from the window made Newt glow.

How there was something otherworldly about Newt, a whisper that nagged at the back of Thomas’s mind. Planted like one of Sonya’s flowers, growing and blooming within him. He experiences a rush of emotion so deep his knees felt weak. Thomas’s thoughts must have shown on his face, because Newt’s smile softened. 

“Lo’ Tommy.” He said. Sunset in his eyes. 

-

“You need. To calm. Down.” Brenda said determinedly to her reflection between the racks of clothes in their store. She pointed a finger at the double staring back at her through the pock-marked mirror, the two of them gazing in mutual accusation. “You need to calm. Your shit. Down. You gotta find your balance or what the fuck ever. You gotta use your ancestral witch shit. You gotta magic some nonsense. Center your fucking aura.”

Thomas popped his had up from where he had been sitting under the counter, gazing at Brenda across the empty store. “Uh, Bren?”

She turned to him, eyebrows raised. “Yeah?” The word like a snap.

He sunk back down in fear. “Nothing.”

It was quiet for a few minutes, wind whistling outside and the deserted shop creaked and settled in the cold snowy evening, the store so dead they’d boasted a grand total of twelve sales the entire shift.

“So, uh. You okay?” Thomas asked from the safety of his cover. There was a moment of silence.

“Yep.”

Thomas wondered if everything was not alright, if the unflappable Brenda might in fact be slightly flapped over a certain pair of electric blue eyes and dark waves of hair. “Stop scratching. It’ll get infected again.” He threw over the counter like a proverbial peace offering, smiling when she clicks her tongue in annoyance at being caught.

She hops up to sit on the counter, leaning over and down to look at him. “Wanna see something cool?” She asks and Thomas nods, taking his customary seat behind the register.

“Shoot.”

She wiggles her eyebrows before closing her eyes, inhaling deeply. Thomas looks at her. Nothing happens.

“Wow. Cool Bren.”

“Shut up.” She mutters, face pulled into a frown.

“Okay, rude Bren.”

“Shut up.” She says again, hands coming to hover over the melted down candle on the counter. The tiny wick lit and swaying and making the chipped and worn image of Jesus on the glass container flicker in the light. Thomas shuts up. The candle goes out. Brenda’s eyes pop open.

_ _“Huh.” Thomas says. _ _

_ _Brenda bristles. “That’s what you give me? A ‘huh’?” _ _

_ _“Coulda been the wind.” Thomas counters. _ _

_ _“It wasn’t the wind! It was my ancestral foremothers moving through me!” She snaps. Thomas makes a ‘okay buddy’ expression and promptly dodges the shove she sent his way. He laughs and throws up his hands in surrender. _ _

_ _“Okay! Okay-okay! It was the foremothers! Don’t hex me Harry.” _ _

She snorts. “Please, we _both_ know that I am nothing less than Ginny level badassary.” Her grin widens showing her sharp teeth. “Pretty cool though huh?”

Thomas absentmindedly counts the change in the register, making a note of it in the spiral bound notebook that they used as a cash out book for closing. He wasn’t holding his breath for other customers. “So this witch stuff, you’re looking into it?”

They had fifteen quarters, thirty two dimes.

“Yeah, Mary’s been teaching me a thing or two.” Brenda comments absentmindedly.

Seven nickels, twenty three loonies-

Thomas’s head snaps up. “_Mary_? The _bartender_? From Trinity? Is a _witch_?” 

Brenda scratches her new industrial piercing and looks down her nose at him. “Of course she is. You think they could afford drinks at those prices and make rent?” _You basic fool_ is not said but clearly implied.

Thomas opens his mouth to say, _something_, when the bell above the door dings and he contemplates just telling the customer that they’re closed (was he a bad employee?) when he sees who’s walking through the door. And, okay, it’s not like he sits up like a dog promised a walk, but as Newt breezes into Scorched, all long back coat and windswept hair and pink cheeks from the cold Thomas is man enough to admit that his ears perk up.

“Nice to see that you two are hard at work.” Newt offers, coming to rest his elbows on the counter and sprawl effortlessly. (Thomas hadn’t known that it was possible to be jealous of a single snow flake, but the small ice crystal was currently caught on Newt’s cheek and Thomas _wished_ it would just melt _already_.)

Brenda waved her hand at Thomas. “I was just showing Mr. Unbeliever here a few tricks that Mary’s been teaching me. Thanks for connecting us.”

(The snow flake still hadn’t melted.)

“Cool. Glad to help. She’s one of the best.” Newt said while rifling through the small bowl of tarnished rings on the counter, noticing one with a deer insignia, looking at it with absent interest.

Thomas’s eye twitched. (That miniscule piece of frozen water was a _fucking asshole_.)

“So what’s up?” Brenda asked, swinging her legs from her perch on the counter. 

Newt smiled. “Well, I was wondering if I coul-“ The sentence was cut off, quite suddenly, by Thomas’s hand reaching out and his thumb brushing against Newt’s flushed pink cheek. The snowflake melting instantly on the pad of Thomas’s finger.

The two of them blinked, turning as one to look at Thomas, who was contemplating walking out the door to never return. (Victory over one’s enemy always came at a cost.)

“I was wondering,” Newt continued, eyes laughing and mouth twitching as he stared at Thomas’s silent panicked expression. “If I could convince you to let me steal Thomas away early tonight.”

Brenda raised an eyebrow, having realized correctly that Thomas was currently blue-screening like a Windows 95 and would not, in fact, be contributing to the conversation. “What’s in it for me?”

With a flourish Newt pulled a small photo from his pocket, image side facing away from them and held between two fingers. “I’ve come to poses, through great personal risk, a photograph of Gally and his best friend from childhood.”

She waved away his offering like a fly. “So? Why do I need proof that Gally and some other little snot were both little snots?”

Newt’s eyes flashed, the bait had been taken. “His best friend when he was a child was a pinwheel with googly-eyes.”

The was a moment of silence. “Alright.” And then Brenda looked over at Thomas with a sigh. He was just starting to come out of his full mind glitch. “He’s gonna be useless now anyways."

Thomas had returned to the planet enough to take mild offense. “Hey.” He said with a frown. Brenda shoed him away and snatching the agreed upon payment from Newt’s fingers.

“Go, before I change my mind.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Thomas stumbled around the counter, grabbing his coat and shoving his beanie haphazardly onto his head with a grin. Newt’s returning smile making Thomas’s chest thump like the bass guitar Newt sometimes plucked at.

Newt turned in the doorway. “Oh, Bren?”

Brenda looked up from the paperback she’d started to flip through. “Yeah?”

“Teresa’s on her way to help you close, I texted her.”

The color drained suddenly from Brenda’s face. “_What_?” What’d-why’d you-what am I gonna do?” She sputtered, panicked and rapid fire and so adorably smitten that Thomas’s heart melted a bit.

“Maybe try centering your aura?” Thomas called pleasantly from the door. Brenda threw a shoe at him.

Outside and safe from projectiles in the cold Thomas looked up at Newt, feeling the taste of winter and possibilities on his tongue. “So, what’s your big plan?"

Newt chuckled, flourishing a very large joint and two small pieces of glossy paper with block print writing and Thomas realized he had three of his favorite things in the world all in one place. “Thought you might like to go to a movie.”

They sat in the mostly deserted theater, chewing on extra soft jujub’s and Newt wincing and grimacing occasionally as Pennywise lay death and terror to the small unassuming town, its rag-tag group of young unsung hero’s fighting their fears. Thomas yawned next to him, stoned and simmering with happiness at the way that Newt’s hand would reach out to clutch his wrist as the particularly jarring moments. Everything about the evening taking on an almost disbelieving, dreamy quality. (He might have to have a long Brenda-style mirror conversation with himself soon about getting his shit together.)

“This doesn’t bother you at all, does it?” Newt whispers in his ear and Thomas decided that ‘dreamy’ wasn’t good enough. Today was _exquisite_.

Thomas shrugs and chews on a candy, congratulating himself on the success of finding another lemon flavored one. “It’s not real. Why be scared?"

“Didn’t you get the memo Tommy? Not everything is how it seems.” Newt whispers again, breath tickling his cheek. Thomas turns to look at him and Newt pulls back slightly, as if it was Thomas, and not the film that he was uncertain of. 

“I don’t scare easy Newt.” Thomas says, stubbornly, just a bit too loud. And maybe it wasn’t just the movie that Thomas was talking about. Just maybe.

Everything tasted like lemon and sugar.

Newt looked down at him with an unreadable expression. Like he couldn’t quite figure Thomas out. If Newt ever managed to, Thomas would ask him how he did it.

Thomas couldn’t figure himself out either.

A soft ghost of a laugh escaped Newt’s lips. “No. I guess you don’t.”

-

Sometimes when Thomas sleeps he dreams of Newt.

Sometimes in his dreams when Newt reaps he is soft. Gentle as the smoke from a camp fire and just as comforting. He drifts into the hospital room like a whisper, sliding between the beeping machines along the wall to stop before the large bed. The buzzing lights above them go quiet. With a tiny inviting smile and warm honey in his dark brown eyes he looks down at the old woman. “Time to go.” He murmurs, taking her hand and washing the pain and exhaustion from her veins.

But sometimes in his dreams when Newt reaps he is the nightmare of the stories conjured up from the testaments of old. Dark slinking tendrils of shadow would slide under doors, wrapping around the handle like claws, the click of a lock being pulled echoing loudly in the room. The person would look over their shoulder in fear and Newt would loom behind them, hair shining like a burning crown of gold. His eyes would glow with a fire that his victim would soon feel and his accent would grow deeper, silky smooth. The words dripping like poison from his lips. Whispered into the ear of his prize. “Time to go.”

Thomas would bolt upright in his bed, drenched in sweat. Chest heaving.

-

Newt kissed him for the first time early on a Tuesday morning.

Thomas and Harriet were sitting at the wood island counter, sharing irish whiskeys and misery as they quizzed each other, rain tapping against the dark window. Neither one particularly interested in studying anymore, considering they had swapped cards and were now quizzing each other on the opposite person’s subject matter.

“What is a good example of how a single shot can change a genera?” Thomas asked Harriet.

Harriet thought for a moment before putting her hand up. “Easy. Blair Witch Project.” Thomas groaned but Harriet continued, determined. “No? Whatever. I stand by it. That shit was scary as all hell. Okay.” She slurred, looked at her own study cards with one eye closed to focus. “What is the proper way to asses airway blockages in a triage ER?”

Thomas snapped his fingers, grinning. “You ask them.” A muscle in Harriet’s cheek twitched in response. Thomas flipped to the next card, when suddenly there was a sharp snap, the door opening and closing. Newt spotted them, and Thomas sat up straighter at the sight.

Newt’s hair was disheveled, his already pale features ghost white and making his eyes seem much larger in his head. “Oh-hey.” Voice far away and distracted. Before either of them could respond he’d walked quickly down the hall and into his room, door creaking closed with a snap. Thomas swallowed, concern clogging his throat. Tucked underneath Newt’s arm had been his scythe. Newt had been out to collect. And judging by the way he fled the room, _really_ didn’t want to talk about it.

Thomas wondered, sometimes, in the early hours of morning when he couldn’t sleep, what it was like to exist dancing on the line between this life and the next. He wondered if the veil between the two would wrap around Newt’s lithe frame, tangling and pulling him in all directions. Ripping him apart at the seams and spilling gold dust like shooting stars.

“Every once in a while, there’s a tough one.” Harriet’s soft explanation made him start, turning to her. Head invariably drawn back to the direction of Newt’s room. The urge to go pulling at his clothes like a tug. Knowing that he wouldn’t. Newt clearly wanted to be alone. Thomas understood that. But still, the want was strong. To slip his arms around the other. To smooth the strands back from his forehead. He looked away, Harriet’s eyebrows raising in a silent question. Thomas shook his head.

“He wants to be alone.” He said. She smiled, a hint of sadness playing around the edges of her lips. No one more intimate to this feeling than her. Thomas wondered what it was like for the two of them, for Harriet and Sonya, falling in love.

Thomas knew that they had met at the campus bookstore. That on their first date Sonya had taken her to the botanical gardens. That their second date had been Sonya bringing Harriet a sandwich at the library on her way to her own class. That their third date Harriet had snuck a bottle of wine into the movie theater.

When had Sonya told Harriet?

As if reading his thoughts Harriet’s spoke with warm affection clear as bells. “They go so far away without actually going anywhere. Sometimes...” She paused. “Sometimes they just need a little while to find their way back.”

Thomas nodded, looking in the direction of Newt’s room. “I know.” He says softly.

Harriet went to bed soon after with her laptop, mumbling about a new episode of a show. Clearly wanting to give Thomas the space to be alone with his thoughts. Newt hadn’t come out. Thomas moved to the couch, figuring he would finish the movie he was watching and taking notes on (Lady Bird, he was in love with the film.) and then he would head out. Instead the pull of the soft fabric and comforting familiarity of the apartment drawing him in.

Thomas fell asleep to the light patter of rain on the bay window and the smell of Newt and warm leather, only to wake hours later to the darkened apartment with his mouth feeling like a desert. Sitting up, disoriented. Seeing a sticky note next to his laptop.

‘You looked so peaceful! Didn’t want to wake you! Pancakes tomorrow! S.’

Thomas smiled, rising to get a cup of water, moving through the dark apartment without turning on a light, knowing the layout better than his own. Drinking greedily at the sink, draining his cup, letting the water drip down his chin. Filling it and taking another huge sip. The light flicking on, making him choke.

“Tommy?” Newt said, confused, standing in the suddenly bright kitchen, still fully clothed and smelling of cigarettes. Clearly having not slept.

Thomas sputtered, coughing and wheezing. “Hey. Shit-sorry. I fell asleep finishing my movie because Harriet went to bed and then Sonya didn’t wake me when she got home an-_oh_-there’s gonna be pancakes tomorrow.” He explained, rapid fire.

Newt looked at him for a second, taken aback. “Pancakes?” He asked, clearly lost. Because Thomas was an idiot. A pancake proclaiming fucking idiot.

“Pancakes.” The pancake idiot confirmed. Newt shook his head as if to try to digest the entire conversation, finding it illegible, crumpling it up and throwing it away. It was then that Thomas noticed that color had yet to return to Newt’s already fair features. That his fingers were tucked into his pockets. His shoulders hunched. And, for some reason, his entire being was just a bit out of focus, like he wasn’t completely here. Thomas frowned, biting down on his concern.

“Water?” He asked instead, thrusting the now empty glass towards Newt and making him take a hurried step back. Newt shook his head. “Okay. Thomas said, turning back towards the couch. “I’m just gonna…” He trailed off, gesturing to the couch. Newt looked at him, air thick.

“Tommy?” Thomas blinked, Newt’s tone unfamiliar and small.

“Yeah?”

Newt looked down. Back up. Worried his lower lip between his teeth for a second. “Will you stay with me tonight?”

Thomas frowned, confused. “I already am?” He asked.

Something in Newt seemed to slump just for a second. And then it was gone. Thomas tilted his head and Newt smiled, scrubbing at his face. “Yeah. Of course. Sorry, it’s late.” He turned, shooting a last look over his shoulder. “Night Tommy.” He called as he retreated, and Thomas had the distinct impression that he was missing something. Running their conversation back over in his mind.

It clicked.

Thomas watched Newt go, clutching his glass of water. Realization skating through his veins like lightning. _With me_. Newt had said. Not here. _Me_. Maybe Thomas was wrong. He was reading into it. He was definitely not thinking the right thing. _Me_. Thomas swallowed, placing his glass gently on the counter, rooted to the spot. Pins and needles tapping at his skin.

Fuck it. He didn’t scare easy, after all.

He took a deep steadying breath, walking quickly but silently to the hall. A soft glow coming from Newt’s door, open just a crack. But it was open. _With me_. Thomas padded over, knocking softly, hearing the creak of floorboards and Newt shifting inside.

“Tommy?” The door opened, revealing Newt. Still fully clothed and the window open. He’d been sitting on the fire escape chain smoking judging from the amount of ash. Yellow light from the desk lamp barely making a dent in the shadows.

“With you?” Thomas asked, toes on the edge of the threshold. Newt’s eyes darkened.

With me.” He said with a sense of finality, pulling him in, closing the door softly behind Thomas. They stood, silent. And then Newt reached out, wrapping his cold hand around Thomas’s wrist and giving a fitful tug, pulling him towards the bed and climbing in, clicking off the light in the process and plunging them into darkness. All except a single slash of moonlight from the window.

Thomas following him to the bed, powerless. Lying down and turning to look at Newt. Newt mirroring him. His heart pounding so loudly he wondered if Newt could hear it. The words he’d been fighting all night threatening to get out, pushing them down, swallowing them. A different set of three words escaping instead.

“What’s it like?” Thomas whispers in the dark. Newt looks at him searchingly and Thomas hopes that he finds what he’s looking for, willing to give anything to Newt in that moment to lift the shadow that had fallen over the deep brown eyes. Apparently, he finds it, because he smiles at Thomas so softly that he feels his heart _squeeze_ from the sight.

“It’s death Tommy. It’s inevitable."

Thomas doesn’t know what to say to that, how to argue or compromise against the irrefutable truth. So he does the only thing he can think of. He, reaches out to lace their fingers together. (Those fingers, long and pale and delicate but surprisingly strong that he could never stop thinking about.) Watching how Newt’s eyes flutter happily closed at the contact, and when they open again there is a faint glimmer of Newt, _his_ Newt back in them.

Newt looks at him and brushes a stray hair from Thomas’s forehead and the sensation makes his skin light on fire.

Thomas tries to speak around the lump in his throat, words coming out thick. “I’m sorry it’s like that.”

With a deep sigh Newt pulls himself further back into Thomas’s world with noted effort. His outline seems more solid, losing some of its blurry quality. Repeating the motion of brushing Thomas’s hair aside purely, it seemed, for his own benefit. “It’s not usually bad. A lot of the time it’s…peaceful. And sometimes…” Fingers tracing Thomas’s hairline over and over.

“Sometimes there’s no debate at all, no need for processing. A soul so good and pure there was never any doubt. A lot of the time they’re stuck behind for a particular reason. A doctor that won’t rest until she finds a cure. A grandfather holding on until his first grandchild is born. A lot of the time those cases get to stay until their work is done, and then we go get them. Those are the best ones.” Newt moves, gathering Thomas up in his arms and Thomas goes willingly, feeling the way Newt’s arm snakes around his side, tucking Thomas’s head under his chin.

“So they just...disappear?” Thomas asks the satin soft skin of Newt’s collarbone, ear pressed against his chest and feeling his heartbeat, loud and strong and gloriously alive.

Thomas feels the vibrations as Newt speaks. “It’s a lot like watching a captive bird go free really. You can see they’re absolutely petrified until the moment it happens. And then, the joy. They leave their cage and get to be free. Free for whatever comes next.” Newt sighed.

“What comes next?” Thomas asks, lips brushing against Newt’s throat.

“I don’t know.” Newt’s arms tighten around him. “That’s the big question, I guess.”

He leans down and buries his nose in Thomas’s hair, inhaling deeply. The action simultaneously relaxes Thomas and lights him on fire. “Thanks Tommy.” Newt mumbles. It was quiet for a minute. Newt’s breathing evened out. He was asleep. Newt was always tired after.

Balancing on a different plane of existence would be, Thomas imagines.

He woke a few hours later and rose softly, untangling himself from Newt without waking him because holy crap they were so close and Newt had been so warm, and Thomas knew that if he stayed he would get lost in the feeling of it. Of having Newt’s arms around him and nose buried in his hair, chest rising and falling and skin as pale as moonlight under his palm. It would be nothing, nothing at all for Thomas to slide his hand up from its spot on Newt’s lower back, to feel shoulder blades, to graze fingers over the knots of his spine, to write words that he wanted to say out loud on Newt’s skin with fingertips.

So Thomas got up, stealing a smoke from the pack on Newt’s desk and climbing out to the first escape. Hoping the nicotine would stop the shaking in his hands and his chest. He lights the smoke and inhales deeply, feeling the burn, watching the light rise slowly over the brick ally that he had once paced in, frantically talking to Minho about a forgotten DVD. Before. A lifetime ago.

“Hey.” Newt had woken despite his best efforts, climbing out his window to sit across from him with a riot of bedhead that was begging to be tousled. Stealing the cigarette from Thomas’s fingers and inhaling slow. “What time is it?”

Thomas checked his watch. “It’s seven on the dot.” They shivered in the cold but neither moved. Enjoying the quiet dawn together. Newt ran his hand through messy hair, stretching. Letting his arms fall limply to his side.

Thomas steals the cigarette back and takes a drag, playfully batting Newt’s hand away. “Sharing is caring.” Thomas teases, and in the scuffle the cigarette held between his teeth slips and is lost down the fire escape, exploding into a tiny burst of sparks in the ally bellow.

“Wanker.” Newt scolds and goes to light another one, only for Thomas to grab his hand on impulse, lacing their fingers together. He watches how Newt stares down at their tangled hands and his eyes reflect the morning light.

Thomas traces his thumb over Newt’s knuckles and realizes that these hands are the hands that guild people from this life to the next and he is seized by a sudden desire. As if in slow motion he pulls Newt’s hand up to his lips and kisses the middle knuckle once, lightly. Hears Newt’s breath stutter.

“Tommy?” Thomas looks up at the question, (and the shaking unspoken question underneath it.). Newt bites his lip and narrows his eyes, coming to a decision as he stares at Thomas. Thomas’s heart feels like it’s trying to leave through his mouth, blocked only by Newt’s hand.

“Hmm.” Newt hummed, eyes tracing his face.

Thomas looked at him, bathed in the morning light. Hair shining gold, eyes lit up. Glowing. “Yeah?” Thomas said, words thick and lips grazing against Newt’s skin.

“Should I have kissed you last night?” The words tumbled from Newt’s mouth like music.

Thomas smiles, warmth spreading through his whole body despite the cold and his teeth indent lightly into Newt’s knuckle when he nips at it. Newt makes an…_indecent_ noise and Thomas kisses the offense. Happiness going off like fireworks in his head, dizzy from the rush.

“Yeah.” Thomas sighs.

Newt shifted, moving to sit next to him. Untangling their fingers only for his hand to be able to reach up and slowly grasp the back of Thomas’s neck. Pulling him forward so close that foreheads pressed against each other. Fingers stroking the nape of his neck, scratching softly, once.

“Should I kiss you now?” Newt murmured. Playful teasing floating like lavender smoke between the letters. Thomas smiles wider, feeling Newt’s do the same in response.

“Yeah.”

Newt kissed him, slanting their mouths together, sweet and slow.

The second time Newt kissed him was thirty seconds after the first one had ended, and it was neither sweet, nor slow.


	3. Grave Situations pt.3

They kept it quiet at first. 

It was new and it was perfect and it was theirs. 

Thomas had heard and seen and been happy for couples that wandered around moonstruck. But he hadn’t understood. Not really. What it was like to float in a haze. Everything was overstimulating to Thomas. Constantly egged on by Newt, always keeping him buzzing under his skin. 

A week after that first morning on the balcony when they were out with friends in their booth at the bar Newt had reached over, brushing his knuckles against Thomas’s thigh. Making him jerk up, back ramrod straight, Newt hiding his smile behind his pint. Thomas had tried to breath, to see straight, to control his flush. 

“Dude you feel okay?” Minho had asked, concern written on his face. “You don’t look so good.” 

Thomas had sputtered, clearing his throat. “I don’t feel so good actually.” He squeaked out, grabbing Newt’s hand under the table and _squeezing_. “Think I’m gonna head out.” 

Newt had faked a frown perfectly, innocent as fresh snow. 

“I’ll walk you.” Newt said, the two of them tumbling out into the cold damp night, a five-minute walk to Newt’s apartment taking half an hour, the two of them pulling each other into alleys every few steps to kiss and touch. 

Newt walking Thomas backwards through the door of his place, pushing him up against the wall, hand tracing the hard outline of Thomas’s jeans. “Newt-“ Thomas groaned. Hips bucking in response, fists clutching Newt’s jacket, shoving it off his shoulders. Pressing up desperately against him, pulling Newt down to slam their lips together. Newt licking his way into his mouth, one hand firmly grasping the back of Thomas’s neck, holding him in place, the other pressed up against the wall, boxing Thomas in, surrounding him. 

“Do you have any idea-“ Newt paused to place a trail of burning kisses down Thomas’s neck, biting and nipping and making his head spin. Chest tight and back bowed into Newt. 

“How bloody amazing it is-“ Newt tugging Thomas forward down the hall towards his bed, lips and hands everywhere, leading him, Thomas helpless but to chase the sensation. Newt pushing him backwards, Thomas’s knees hitting the edge of the bed, tumbling down and letting out a hitching sigh as Newt climbed on top of him. 

“-How un-bloody believable it is to make you squirm?” The blonde finished, leaning over to claim his lips in a searing kiss, hand _finally_ moving lower, unbuttoning his jeans with a decisive pop. Fingers skating over hyper sensitive skin, Thomas’s mouth opening to moan at the sensation. For the sound to be swallowed, Newt’s tongue licking and exploring and making him shiver and _want_. 

Thomas broke the kiss, gasping for air, head thrown back. “Ah!“ He gasped, only to have Newt’s teeth nibbling on his collarbone, movement’s becoming sloppy and desperate. 

The sigh against his heated damp skin had his eyelids fluttering and Thomas couldn’t help but let out a small whine. Newt drew back, just enough to look in his eyes and grin impishly, hand moving in slow lazy motions, devouring the way that Thomas twitched in his touch. “Just like this?” Newt whispered, nibbling on Thomas’s ear, making him light up from the inside out. 

“Like that.” Thomas sighed, whole body drawn tight as a bow string. Voice threaded and uneven. “Just like that.” Thomas hitched, over and over again as Newt’s hand moved up and down and when he threw his head back to moan through his release Newt kissed him, swallowing the sound. 

How different the world seemed, waking up in Newt’s bed. Everything in shades of gold and black. The sensation of Newt’s fingers running along his spine as he drifted. Pressing a soft kiss to Newt’s collarbone. Feeling the other boy bury his nose in Thomas’s own hair, inhaling deeply. “I don’t think we’re being very discreet.” Newt muttered against his temple. 

Thomas hummed a question mark and placed another kiss under Newt’s jaw, shifting to get closer. Newt chuckled in response and welcomed the contact, the hand that wasn’t busy tracing his spine dropping to Thomas’s hip to squeeze. 

“Because-“ Newt answered, stopping to place another kiss against Thomas’s messy hair and he could feel himself glow under the attention, the way that Newt could make his world turn to polished metal with just one action. “Your coat is out in the hall but you’re _clearly_ not sleeping on the couch.” 

Thomas sighed, unable to muster up the urge to care about much of anything when the light made Newt’s eyes shine like precious jewels. “Oh well.” Thomas muttered happily, thumb reaching to tilt Newt’s chin down and press their lips together in a deep tidal wave kiss. Newt opened his mouth and Thomas greets the morning with his hands fisted in sheets and Newt’s name tumbling from his lips. 

-

The snow begins to turn a muddy brown slush. The last gasps of winter are freezing and damp and inexplicably Thomas finds himself spending most of his time in Newt’s bed. The heavy down comforter and sheets creating a tiny warm universe that they existed in. Thomas would wake in the soft grey light to find Newt already staring at him. A sleepy smile tugging at his face and long white fingers running through Thomas’s hair. Tangling in the strands and rubbing soothing circles in his scalp that made him rumble happily, nuzzling his face into the crook of Newt’s neck. 

With a hum Newt lay a soft kiss to his forehead and the rush of affection that Thomas feels is all-consuming and shocking in its intensity. His arms wrap around Newt and tighten, pulling him closer despite the other’s laughing protest. “Tommy I’ll die of heat stroke!” 

Thomas smiles. Newt was finally warm. 

There is a day where they don’t leave bed at all, a day where freezing hail and raindrops tapped steady at the window from the time they wake up until the time they go to sleep. At some point during that day Thomas’s elbows give out from under him and he falls back against the pillows, flushed and overheated. Gasping and trying to put himself back together after Newt had spent the better part of the past hour taking him apart piece by piece. Newt paths a slow trail of scalding kisses up his shaking body and heaving chest and even though all Thomas sees is his gold hair he knew Newt was grinning like a cat. Newt settles next to him, head propped up on his palm and just looks. 

Thomas feels himself flush and grin wide and love drunk as he comes down, breath slowly returning to a normal pace. “Are you trying to kill me?” He asks weakly. 

Newt laughs, pressing his lips against Thomas’s shoulder. “I try not to bring my work home Tommy.” 

There was a day where they managed to leave bed for a few hours to go to the art museum, spurred on by an exhibit that would be closing soon and a need for fresh air and seven dollar lattes.

Newt’s fingers lingering and brushing against his as they wandered through the gallery, feeling every inch of contact like lighting. Pupils blown out from fleeting touches. Newt standing in front of a massive canvas, looking like a part of the renaissance painting. All intricate line work and soft brush strokes, a study of light and shadow. Thomas’s mouth suddenly feels very, very dry. 

Finding a dark deserted corner tucked away behind a stairwell, Newt laughing as Thomas pushed him up against the wall. “You artsy types sure are swayed by the creative.” He murmured, laughing again until Thomas’s mouth found his pulse point, chest hitching under wandering fingers. Letting his head fall back with a soft thud to allow better access. And then Thomas was sinking to his knees and Newt made a tiny surprised noise that trailed off into a moan, fingers twisting into Thomas’s hair, doing his best to not bite his lip. When Thomas looked up at him Newt’s eyes were _burning_.

And, later, when they’re once again walking through the exhibit, Newt laces their fingers together. Paintings everywhere glow to life, shimmering shifting colors like the tides pulled by the moon. Some with names, but most without. 

There was a day where Thomas had to drag himself from the bed and Newt’s sprawled out form regretfully. (He’d already missed his first lecture of the week and guiltily he realized that he was behind on all his readings.) Watching how Newt smiled up at him as he pulled on the closest sweater. When Thomas leans over to give him a peck goodbye Newt reaches up, hands wrapping around the back of his neck and pull him down into a searing kiss that leaves him breathless and wondering if graduating really was worth it. Newt reads his hesitation correctly and laughs, shoving him away playfully. “Bring back Thai food?” Newt asks. 

Thomas grins, cocky. The self-confidence radiating from him was a welcome side effect of their new relationship. “What’s in it for me?” He teased. 

Newt pouts and shrugs. Stretching. The way his back curved had Thomas wondering all over again if academia was worth missing a moment of soft pale skin. The sun filters weakly through the window and Thomas loses the battle with Newt’s gravitational pull on him. Drifting back into his orbit, leaning over and bracing his hands on either side of Newt’s head. Kissing him in slowly languished burning swipes of lips that has Newt arching up, soft gasps falling from his mouth only to have Thomas swallowing them again and again. When he finally pulls back and away Newt makes a noise of complaint, cheeks flushed and eyes glassy. 

Thomas tried not to be smug. He fails and a shirt is lobbed at him which he catches deftly. “Thai food?” 

Newt’s face twisted into an exasperated smile. “Thai food. You tease.” 

Thomas shivered and hunched his way through the knee-high slush to class, sitting in the dark lecture hall and inhaling the smell of Newt on his clothes. Wanting nothing more than to be transported back to drown in the warm sheets and feel himself be pressed into the mattress while Newt whispers burning words in his ear. 

After two hours and one take-out order of Thai food later he returns to the dark quiet apartment, Harriet off in some horribly prestigious hospital placement program and Sonya out at a film festival with Teresa and Fry. And as he puts the plastic bag stuffed with food on the wood island counter and hurries out of his shoes, practically running down the hall to Newt’s room Thomas is a bit embarrassed to admit that he’d actually _missed_ Newt. 

Horribly, achingly _missed_ him from the minute he’d stepped outside of the apartment and the entire time until he’d come back. Thomas opens the bedroom door and he’s greeted with the sight of Newt, shirtless, (possibly naked, his favorite) covers bunched around his waist. Blinking at him sleepily. Long dark lashes standing out in sharp contrast to pale skin, and Thomas is filled with desire so _intense_ he’s caught off guard.

And then Newt sees the look on Thomas’s face and his eyes darken, slow teasing smile unfurling. Thomas’s legs carry him over to the bed to climb on top of Newt and kiss him before they’d even said a word to each other. Newt nips at his lips and Thomas opens them obediently. Newt’s fingers hook under the edge of his shirt and pulling once, sharply. Thomas breaks the kiss just long enough for Newt to pull his shirt up and over his head, throwing it to the side and burying his fingers in Thomas’s hair and _pulling_ him back down.

With another sharp tug Newt is rolling them over, their positions reversed, and it seemed like some of Thomas’s desperation is infecting Newt as well from the way his kisses are becoming sloppy and hands are wandering all _over_ Thomas, leaving tiny trails of fire everywhere his fingers touch. Newt’s hands ball into fists in his hair, forcing Thomas’s head back and neck to bend up and expose, and Thomas can’t help the weak gasp that escapes his lips when Newt latches his mouth onto his pulse point. 

“Ah!” Thomas cries out, eyes slamming shut as Newt sooths the tiny bruise with his tongue, feeling flushed and overheated. Newt leans back, one hand sliding down from its grip on his hair to his chest, fingers brushing errantly over his nipple teasingly in a way that had Thomas gasping again before Newt’s hand was sliding over his ribs to grip at his hip. Fingers dipping below the waistband of his jeans. 

Newt kissed him, long and smoldering and Thomas couldn’t help the whimper of complaint when Newt pulled away. “Quite the greeting there Tommy, did you forget the Thai food?” His fingers played with Thomas’s jean button. “Trying to distract me?” The sound of a zipper being lowered echoing through the room as Newt dipped down to kiss him again. 

“I missed you.” Thomas whispered honest and uneven against his lips. The hand currently pulling down his pants stilled. Newt leaned back to look him in the eye and Thomas felt his already flushed cheeks burn. 

But then Newt was smiling at him and biting his own kissed-red lower lip between shockingly white teeth, so happy he seemed to shimmer. “I missed you too.” 

And this time when Newt kissed him there is none of the urgency, none of the desperation and heat from a second ago. No now his kisses are slow and full and _gentle_ and it’s, if anything, even more overwhelming. Thomas’s hands can’t stop moving, pulling at Newt’s shoulders, rubbing his arms, grasping Newt’s hips and tugging on them fitfully. The pooling heat in his lower stomach spreading and expanding and making him _want_. 

Newt made short work of his pants, pulling them off and throwing them to the side, and then for a while he just stroked Thomas through his boxers, clearly loving the way that it made Thomas twist and shift against him. “Newt come _on_.” He whined, arching up into Newt’s tracing fingers, ghosting just along the outline of his straining erection. 

“What Tommy?” Newt whispered playfully, breath hot and moist against his ear and Thomas groaned again, arching up into him, desperate for friction. 

“Newt please I nee-_fuck_.” He gasped as Newt’s fingers slid smoothly under his boxers, hand wrapping around him and giving one long firm pump and making him see stars. Newt let out a tiny laugh that might’ve also been a groan and he kisses Thomas, pressing down on him and Thomas can feel _just_ how much Newt was enjoying this. 

“Newt I want-“ He cuts off as Newt’s hand moved (those fucking hands, the ones he’s dreamt about). Newt loved it when Thomas was begging and shattering and undone. “Newt I _want_-” He moaned out when Newt attacked his neck again, licking long wet stripes, making Thomas’s hands clench, thumbs pressing into pronounced hip bones until they bruised. 

“What do you want Tommy?” Newt mumbled between kisses, already starting to travel down his chest. 

Thomas fought against the lust clouded jumble in his head, hands moving up to wrap in Newt’s hair and pull him back up, kissing Newt in a wet open-mouthed burning _thing_ that had them both breathless. 

“I want you.” Thomas mumbled, feeling his cheeks flush. He felt Newt smile against his lips. 

“Well you’ve most definitely got me.” Hand sliding up and down his length again and making him whine. 

“No I-ah! No Newt I want _you_.” Thomas pleaded. They had done almost everything. They hadn’t done _that_ yet. Newt goes still above him for a second, realization dawning on his face. 

He pulled back, hand bracing against the pillow next to Thomas’s head and staring down searchingly. “Tommy are you sure?” Newt muttered. 

Thomas nodded, breathing out and trying to release the glowing butterflies in his lungs, never more sure of anything in his life. “Yeah. But I’ve never-well-I haven’t. With, uh, with a guy before. So if it’s terrible, if _I’m_ terrible-“ 

Newt cut him off with his lips, hand in his hair reaching down to cup his face and the kiss is so sweet and slow and _gentle_ and _happy_ that Thomas’s whole world feels bright and warm like he’d taken a shot of smooth whiskey. 

“It’ll be so good.” Newt mumbled, sounding drunk with happiness, pupils blown, shots of whiskey all his own. “You’ll feel so good. I’ll make you feel so good.” He promised over and over between kisses, hand that was still gripping him starting to pump in slow practiced strokes and Thomas couldn’t help the whine that slipped from his lips, a nagging itch in the base of his spine that drummed insistently. And then Newt was rummaging through the drawer in his end table and Thomas was making short work of Newt’s boxers. 

Settling between Thomas’s thighs and chest moving up and down rapidly Newt locked eyes with him, tracing soothing circles on Thomas’s hip bones. “It’s completely up to you Tommy. Only if you want too-we don’t have t-” Thomas sat up, kissing Newt deeply and he laughed, once, breathless. 

The broke apart, barely, lips still brushing. “Alright.” Newt muttered, hand pushing gently at Thomas’s shoulder, lying him flat on the mattress. “Alright.” He said again and then his hands (shaking slightly) were fussing with the bottle. 

Seconds later Thomas was gasping and squeezing his eyes closed and Newt was murmuring encouragement in his ear, one finger slowly becoming two and then three, a searching quality to his slow thrusts. The long slim digits brushed against _something_ and Thomas saw stars, hips snapping and ‘_Newtnewtnewtnewt_’ falling raggedly from his mouth. If he wasn’t currently going to the moon Thomas would have seen Newt smile in triumph. Those fingers, (those _fucking_ fingers) brushed again, on purpose this time and Thomas’s nails were drawing long, angry red lines down Newt’s back. 

Newt really didn’t seem to mind. 

“Fu-u-ck.” Newt hissed out uneven and the word went straight to the heat in Thomas’s spine, painfully hard and practically jumping out of his own skin. 

Thomas bit Newt’s shoulder. “I’m good, it’s fine, Newt _please_.” He whispered, hazy and strung out. 

“Kay’.” Newt breathed raggedly and pulled back, Thomas mourning the loss of contact. There was a moment of cold and then Newt was placing a hand on Thomas’s lower stomach to steady him, (or maybe both of them) and Thomas couldn’t help but shiver at the contact. Newt must’ve sensed his moment of nerves because he leant down, lips slanting across Thomas’s, sweet and slow, and Thomas swayed into the kiss. 

“This okay? Does it feel okay? You sure?” He mumbled against Thomas’s lips and Thomas was kind of embarrassed to admit that he _whined_. (Newt was hot. Newt constantly making sure that he was okay, checking in with Thomas, was hot. Newt asking for consent every step of the way was hot. Newt caring about him, about wanting him to feel safe and comfortable and _good_ was really really fucking hot.) 

“Newt _please_ I’m so-I can’t a-ah!” He stuttered as Newt wrapped his hand around Thomas again, stroking once, twice.

“Okay.” He said before kissing Thomas in that same swaying rocking way. “Okay.” And then in time with the rocking kiss, Newt’s hips rolled forward, sinking into him an inch, his hand at Thomas’s hip going iron strong. Thomas took a sharp whistle inhale between bared teeth and then heat washed over him, muscles going taunt at the desperate noise Newt made. His body short circuited at the sensation and Thomas gave a fitful press of his hips, trying to draw Newt in. Newt’s grip tightened. 

“I just-fuck Tommy, give us a sec-“ He muttered, accent thick and bubbling behind grit teeth. Breathing hard as he tried to get himself under control.

Thomas let out a breathless laugh. “I’m flattered.” 

Newt let his head fall forward, dewy damp skin sticking to Thomas’s shoulder and bit him, once, playfully. “You should be.” 

“I definitely am-oh-_oh_!”

Newt rolled his hips again and suddenly he was sinking into Thomas fully, Thomas scrabbling at his back and arching and trying his best not to swallow his own tongue as Newt set an aching slow pace, drawing out slowly and rolling his hips back while Thomas groaned and sighed in his ear. His motions a delicious mixture of dragging pooling heat and sharp bursts of pleasure that had Thomas a gibbering mess. 

And then he was slowing down and shifting the angle of his hips and Thomas was complaining until suddenly he wasn’t, a sharp shattered-glass gasp falling from his lips when Newt hit the spot inside of Thomas that his searching fingers had discovered earlier. Thomas tipped his head back and squeezed his eyes shut in reflex, Newt lunging forward to kiss his jaw and bite at the shell of his ear. He hit that shimmer bright point over and over and Thomas was practically begging, the dots of light on his spine connecting to the heat in his stomach.

Newt’s own breathing growing erratic and thrusts becoming sharper and harder and more insistent. He let out a low groan against the side of Thomas’s jaw, kissing and panting and whisper-gasping into his ear. “Tomm-_ohfuck-I_” 

There was a shaking moment as Thomas hung on the edge of the cliff and Newt’s hand wrapped around his erection, pumping in time with his thrusts and with a whimper Thomas was officially done for. Newt pressed a last desperate kiss to his lips. 

“I love you.” Newt gasped as Thomas tipped over into glitter and gold and smoke, Newt following him down seconds later, and the combination of Newt’s words and their releases made Thomas come harder than he ever had in his life. 

-

“Holy crap.” Thomas mutters weakly when he’d finally winds down, pulse still pounding in his ears and reaching up to trace small languid circles around the knots of Newt’s spine. Feeling the laugh shake Newt’s chest as he lay slumped on top of Thomas, face buried in his neck. 

With a resigned sigh Newt places a kiss to his neck and then shifts, pulling away only to collapse next to him, shoulders pressed together. “Yeah.” 

Thomas’s body felt like jello, his bones turned to mush, his head hazy like he’d just woken up from a _very_ good dream. Next to him Newt stretched, back arching and arms going straight up in the air, tense wiry muscles standing out before they dropped back to the bed with a soft thump. “I’ve been thinking about that for a _long_ time.” 

Thomas turns to him, slightly shocked. “Really?” 

“Mhm.”

“How long?” He asks, doing his best to make the comment appear off-hand, failing miserably. 

“A few weeks after we met.” 

Thomas sits up on his elbows, looking down at Newt in shock. “That long?” He repeats and Newt nods, bangs damp with sweat and sticking to his forehead.

“But you were…” 

Newt raises an eyebrow. “With Alby?” 

“Well…yeah.” Thomas says. 

“I kept hoping it was a crush and it’d go away.” Newt shrugged. “It didn’t. Wasn’t fair to Alby, so that’s why I broke up with him.” 

Thomas frowned. “I though Alby broke up with you?” 

“Nah, just let everyone think that so I didn’t have to give a reason.” 

“Hmm.” Thomas hums and can’t help the smug grin that unfurls on his face. “Because you looooooooove me.” He sings. Newt hits him with a pillow and Thomas laughs, dodging and kissing Newt’s forehead. “I love you too.” 

-

There was a night when Thomas was woken in the dark by a low rattling buzz. He had fallen asleep mid-afternoon, exhausted from the cold going around campus and pulling an all-night study session. Sonya letting him in on her way out to meet Brenda and Gally. She’d tried to wheedle him into going, pouting when he waved her off regretfully, swaying where he stood. He’d climbed into Newt’s bed and hadn’t stirred even when the other man had joined him. 

The buzzing started anew and Newt swore and muttered sleepily. He pawed at his night stand in the dark, searching for the small flip phone. Opening it and squinting against the sudden blue light. Thomas yawned next to him and tucked his face into the crook of Newt’s neck to shield his eyes from the glare. It was quiet for a moment and Thomas started to drift comfortably off again before he felt Newt slide out from underneath his arm, making a disgruntled noise. “S’okay?” Thomas mumbled. 

There’s a rustle of clothes being pulled on in the dark and then Newt’s hand is rubbing soothing circles on his lower back and placing a kiss between his shoulder blades. “Don’t wake up, I’ll be back.” Newt whispered against his skin. Thomas nodded and drifted off, lulled back to sleep by the words and Newt scented pillows cushioning his cheek. He woke up when Newt came back, sliding into bed and gathering Thomas up in his arms, shivering. Smelling of smoke and lavender and something thick and cloying. Thomas reaches out in the pale pink dawn and kisses the color back into Newt’s lips. 

-

Real life comes knocking in the form of deadlines and due dates and Thomas regretfully rejoins the world after two weeks of nothing but Newt. “He emerges!” Teresa teases when Thomas slides into their booth at Trinity a few days later, sheepishly unpacking his laptop while Minho wolf whistled. 

“About time honestly.” Teresa says with a knowing grin. Thomas coughs. 

“What do you mean?” He asks high pitched and obvious. 

Minho rolled his eyes. “Honestly dude, the only two people more obvious then you and Newt are Brenda and Teres-OW!” He jumped, reaching down to rub his ankle. “What the hell?” 

Teresa shrugged, smiling. “Sorry, had a leg twitch.” 

Thomas turned, lording over Teresa with a smug grin. “_So_ it looks like Brenda finally realized that you’re not ‘looking for the perfect sweater.’ when you visit the store every other wee-OW.” 

Minho rubbing his shin still. “You should really get that leg twitch sorted out Teresa.” He advises dryly. 

Soon after Teresa’s hair begins to change color rapidly. Shifting from blue to green to purple to pink week from week, the shades so vibrant and glowing people on the street would stop and stare. Thomas is sitting with her in the library when a girl from their study group looks over and gazes at the sparkling magenta weaved through brown curls in awe. “How do you _do_ that?” the girl asks with envy. 

Teresa smiled, mouth pulled secretly to the side. “Witchcraft.” Is all she will answer. 

-

Thomas stops jumping at Lazarus the floral snake sliding around corners or being curled up behind the teapot roughly around the same time Newt leans over to kiss his forehead absentmindedly when they sit in their booth at the bar. Thomas feels himself look up from his notebook, flushed and grinning megawatts and Newt tilts his head, trying his best to hide his own pleased smile when Mary the bartender offers an exasperated “_Finally_.” from behind the counter. It’s a sentiment most people in their lives share. 

Looming finals take him away from the smoke and magic and gold dust that he had wandered into and lost himself in, and Thomas realizes that although Newt had always been part of his life, he’d recently became his _whole_ life. He’s trying to fix that. 

“Long time no talk.” Chuck’s voice declares sullenly from his phone and Thomas winces, shifting the device to his other ear as he walks through the grocery store, shoving things absentmindedly in his cart. He hadn’t been back to his apartment in weeks, and he plucks a bag of brown rice off the shelf as a peace offering to Minho, wondering just how much food he’d left rotting in the fridge. 

“I know Chuck. Sorry about that. Finals are getting crazy and I’ve been working a bunch and…”Thomas trailed off, teetering on the edge of telling Chuck about Newt. It wasn’t that he thought it would be poorly received, his family was good and kind and made their feelings known about how love was love and that was the end of it. It was more the fact that Thomas was afraid of jinxing it. That Newt, and everything that he brought into Thomas’s world was too good to be true. 

“…and?” Prompts Chuck, causing Thomas to snap back into reality. He swallows, tipping over the edge. 

“And, well. Uh. Remember my friend Newt? You met him when you guys helped me move out of dorms after first year?” 

There’s hysteric laughter on the other end of the phone and Thomas suddenly wishes that you could send a noogie through a text. Chuck eventually stops and collects himself, and when he speaks again he’s still a bit breathless. “Yeah. I remember. Mom’s going to be over the moon you finally got up the balls to make your move. She was starting to get a bit worried. I’m happy for you bro. Anyways-you see that they dropped the DLC for Zero Dawn? Mom said she’d get it for me if I get a eighty in calc which is _impossible_. You had Janson for that class too right? He’s a fucking sociopath.” 

Thomas tries not to drop the peace offering rice and sputters in the overpriced grocery store for about twenty seconds before letting out a small relieved laugh of his own, Chuck’s instant acceptance giving him a bit of emotional whiplash. “Yeah. Janson’s the worst. You’ll get the eighty though. Study the practice exam, he’s lazy and uses the same questions a lot of the time.” He advises, absentmindedly tucking a package of mint tea into the basket. He knew Newt and Sonya were running out. 

The peace offering of brown rice and protein powder (added into the cart when Thomas guiltily remembers the Tupperware of pasta that, by his count was now a month old) was gratefully received. Gally sulks for about ten minutes that his love nest is gone and reminds Thomas of the fact that it is his turn to buy cleaning supplies, also-oh he moved in two weeks ago, and Brenda spilled the beans about the whole ‘Witch-Death clusterfuck’. (Thomas sputters and squawks but accepts this with minimal complaint once he’s reminded that his rent is now three hundred dollars less.)

His world quickly devolves into muttering study points and frantically high-lighting scrip lines and clicking keys. Minho fighting back tears as he labels diagrams of muscles and Teresa compulsively braids her hair (a classic coping mechanism) as they sit in the library late into the night. Thomas looks up out the window of the library and thinks longingly of marble pattern sheets and a deep voice whispering things in his ear as he falls asleep and he’s simultaneously happy and annoyed with how love struck he is. 

On a bright day in spring close to exams when everything smelt of earth and life there was a soft scratch at the front door. Thomas and Harriet looked up from the kitchen island where they were studying. Newt and Sonya locked eyes and shrugged, neither of them expecting visitors, but, drop-ins were far from uncommon. 

Sonya floats over, drinking her strawberry milkshake from a curly straw, bracelets singing and jumping on her wrists. She opened the door and crouched down at the sight of a large calico cat. It held in its mouth an envelope so black it seemed to absorb light. She scratched the cat behind the ear, taking the envelope with a polite “Thank you.” The cat meowed, (either in acceptance or as scolding, it was up to the individual’s interpretation) and slunk away down the hall like only a cat could, tail waving lazily in the air. 

Newt stood and walked over as Sonya opened the letter, reading over her shoulder. A frown forming and pulling his eyebrows together. 

“Huh.” Sonya said and Harriet and Thomas looked at each other. 

“Huh?” Harriet repeats, deadpan. Clearly the art of the mystique had long since stopped shocking her. 

“Apparently there’s a good chance I’m the Anti-Christ.” Sonya said matter-of-fact around the bright pink curly straw tucked in the side of her mouth.

-

In a whirlwind of exams and papers and one mild mental breakdown involving Casablanca, suddenly Thomas finds himself standing outside Exam Center Three, blinking in the bright spring sunlight as a tide of bodies moved around him and his undergrad is suddenly and definitively, _done_. 

_Huh_. Is all he can think until he spots Minho running towards him, screaming with joy, fresh from his own final exam. He picks Thomas up, practically throwing him into the air and Thomas can’t help but laugh. A buzz from his phone and then he’s texting Teresa and she appears half an hour later, barreling into the two of them with a shriek of joy all her own, hand stained with ink. 

Minho picks her up too, throwing her into the air with much greater success than Thomas. There’s a honk that they all recognize and as one they turn to see Newt leaning against his white beat up Cadillac, arms crossed and grinning wide. 

Minho rushes over and Newt throws out an arm. “Don’t you dare-“ 

Minho ignores him, chucking him up into the air, and after the second toss Newt stops struggling and succumbs to laughter as well. Even Death was allowed to have fun on his days off. 

-

Minho’s parents gave them a weekend free at their family cabin as a graduation present. Their friends piled into two rented vans and took off for the forest with the trunks full of hot dogs and clinking bottles and bathing suits. There was also a large cake that read ‘Happy Birthday Thomas!’ although Thomas only found out about its existence later. (He’d hoped they’d all forgotten his birthday, not wanting to make the weekend about him. This was supposed to be a celebration for _all_ of them finishing school. They hadn’t, obviously. They were his best friends, after all.)

The cottage had a dock and beach, a fire-pit and, as Brenda put it with a limp wave of her wrist ‘avant-garde rustic vibe’. 

“That was exactly what my parents were going for, I’ll let them know.” Minho deadpans, holding bags and bags of groceries as they unload the car. 

Thomas looks down at the water and turns to see Newt already smiling at him, quirking an eyebrow.

“Race you?” Thomas asks, and Newt grins at the challenge in his voice, but Thomas is already moving. Kicking his shoes off and thundering along the dock, whipping his shirt over his head. Hot on his heels the graceful quick steps of Newt are a direct contrast. Thomas lets out a shout as he jumps, springing through the air before pulling in tight for a cannon ball, watching the water rush forward and squeezing his eyes closed at the last second. 

The explosion of breaking the lakes surface, and then nothing. Muffled silence, hanging suspended in the black, so profoundly peaceful and quiet. And then Newt was next to him, shifting the currents and spinning them closer together. Their fingers tangle together. With a sharp kick he rose, breaking the surface and laughing wildly. “Beat you.” He gasped to Newt. 

Newt looks at Thomas and, pulls on their clasped hands, towing Thomas closer as they tread lazily. “You won the battle Tommy.” He said, hands coming up to rest on his shoulders and Thomas leans in, already tilting his head to receive a kiss. Newt’s eyes flash. “But I’ll win the war.” He whispers before pushing down. Playfully dunking him and then sputtering when Thomas pulls him down below the surface as well. 

They splash their way back into the shallows and Thomas stood, waves lapping at his chest. He reached out, grabbing Newt and pulling him close, the ripples from their bodies meeting in the murky water splashing. Newt wrapped his long slim arms around Thomas’s neck, legs locking around his middle. 

Their noses bump together and Thomas can’t help but grin. “I won.” He insisted stubbornly, hands gripping Newt’s waist as they swayed in the water. 

Newt gave him a swift firm peck. “Debatable.” 

The birthday cake comes out around the same time the stone fireplace gets lit and Thomas is thankful for the warmth as an excuse for his flushing cheeks. At least until Newt kisses him, light and closed lipped on the mouth just after he blows out the candles. And then he has no excuse at all. 

Newt is sent out to get firewood and Thomas almost follows him because, well, there’s a lot, a lot of scenario’s that could be explored. But life is not kind, and just as Thomas is tip-toeing out the door to go find Newt Harriet spots him. 

“Could you go grab Sonya? She’s down by the dock I think.” She asks. (Maybe the long dead ghost of the snowflake was getting its revenge.) 

Thomas grumbles and grumps and stumbles out into the cool evening, spotting a thin figure down by the water, long hair glinting in the bright moonlight. And it _was_ bright. The moon unnaturally luminous and as Thomas makes his way down to the girl something prickles and rises in his throat. She was swaying slightly, as if pulled by the tide, but the water in front of her was still. Still and reflective like a mirror. Unnaturally so. 

“Sonya?” He asks timidly. 

She turns. 

She had never looked more beautiful. Hair hung loose and long down her back, strands spilling and tangling as the wind off the lake caressed the liquid gold, so like her brother’s. Her eyes were unfocused and seemed to ripple, pupils unnaturally narrow. Her lips part, a perfect bow shape curing downward like a scythe. The moon hung directly above her head, huge and full, a crown of white against the black, and despite the warmth of the summer evening goosebumps rose on Thomas’s arms. 

“I am the end.” She says in a voice that rattled from deep within her chest like the shifting of bones in restless tombs. Her arms rise on either side, palms upward and outstretched, tiny slivers of light hanging from her fingertips, threads of destiny. 

Thomas felt his stomach turn to ice, his tongue curl and roll to the roof of his mouth and he took a step back, careful not to touch the shadows of the trees that seemed to stretch and reach for him in the moonlight. 

Her lips part and her teeth shine white. 

“I was born before life and I will never die, for I cannot claim myself, and no other dares to try. I have been earthquakes and pestilence and the splitting atom. I have been plagues and I have been war. I have been the words of false prophets. When giants ruled and shook the ground with their steps I was an errant moon brought to earth. Before that, a boiling sea. You know not what I will be when your time comes, only that it will come. I am inevitable. I am the end.” 

“Sonya-“ He breathed, hushed, taking another shaking step back. There was a moment of silence, her eyes ancient, distant galaxies floating within. 

Sonya snorted. 

“Got ya!” She said with a bright laugh, bouncing forward and steadying him when Thomas almost faints. She lets out a high sweet note of laughter, head thrown back and teeth flashing in the light of the moon as Thomas tries to remember how his lungs worked. 

He clutched at his chest weakly. “Sunny what the fu-“ 

She laughed, again, delighted. “Birthday prank. Brenda bribed me with a very important picture. Do you know that Gally’s best friend when he was a kid was a pinwheel?” Sonya wrapped her arm around Thomas’s neck, pulling him down in a headlock to her height and giving a huge affectionate sloppy smack of a kiss against his cheek. “Happy birthday Thomas.” 

Seconds later, Thomas kicks in the door to the cabin, locking eyes with Brenda who smiles evilly. “I think it’s time for a witch hunt.” He hisses. Brenda looks at him, eyebrows raised. 

“I don’t care for that term.” She says primly. 

“Sonya just try and scare the shit out of you too?” Minho asks knowingly from his spot roasting marshmallows near the fireplace. Gally sitting next to him lets his head fall onto Minho’s shoulder. 

“That picture has brought nothing but despair.” He moans while gazing into the flames with desolation. Minho consoles his dramatic boyfriend by feeding him a toasted marshmallow. 

Newt walks into the cabin, arms full of firewood and doing a double take at Thomas’s still pale complexion. “What’s wrong?” He asks, instantly dropping the wood and coming to cradle Thomas’s face in his hands. 

_Nothing, anymore_. Thomas thinks, feeling his cheeks flush instantly. “Your sister.” He says with a murderous stare in the giggling blonde’s direction. 

Newt lets out a long-suffering sigh, smoothing Thomas’s hair back from his forehead. “If it’s any consolation, I tried to convince my parents to get a dog instead.” 

-

“You’re so happy.” Teresa says.

Thomas turned from the particularly enjoyable sight of Newt racing Minho in the water to look at Teresa. They lay on the dock together sunbathing, abandoned by their friends. He rested his cheek on his crossed forearms, feeling the grain of the wood on his stomach. He stretched, crossing his ankles together let the sun beat down on his back, trying to get as hot as possible before jumping into the lake. 

Thomas grins, reaching out and pushing Teresa’s massive round sunglasses back up the bridge of her nose. “It’s been known to happen.” 

She stuck her tongue out at him, readjusting her halter bathing suit. Sitting on her striped beach towel and looking like someone straight out of Grease, only missing a big pink bubble of gum to complete the image. 

“You’re so happy too.” He adds. 

Teresa stretches, flopping back onto her towel. “Darn right I am.” 

Thomas rolls over onto his back and they stare quietly at the sky. He wonders how many times they’ve done this over the years. It must be in the high thousands. “Remember the plane ride to school? The first one?” He asks and grins when Teresa laughs in response. 

They had been petrified, the both of them. Pale as ghosts and jumping in their seats every time the stewardess has asked them to put their table tray up. Two small-town kids on their big college adventure, a suitcase each and vague directions to campus folded in a zippered pocket of Teresa’s purse. 

“I held your hand the entire way.” She says fondly, wearing the memory like a favorite t-shirt, material soft from time. 

“Yeah your palm was super sweaty. It was really gross.” He says.

She flicked water at him and he laughed. He pulled just once, gently, on a long brown curl, the action an echo of childhood, adding “I’m glad we went to the same school together.” 

“Tom we’ve done everything together since we met.” She pointed out, looking back up at the sky. “Grade school.” 

“Middle school.” Thomas ticks off. 

“High school.” Teresa adds. 

“College.” They finish together. In the distance their friends and loves splash and play in the water.

Thomas points up at a fluffy white cloud. “That one looks like a crocodile.” He says and she shakes her head. 

“No, that’s a giraffe.” She argues.

“What? How do you see that?” 

“There-look? That’s the neck and there’s the head.” Her arm mirrors his in the air. 

“What? No that’s the jaw. There’s it’s teeth, see?” 

“You need glasses old man.” She says and lets her hand fall. 

“You’re four months older than me!” Thomas scowls as his own hand flops to his stomach. 

“Tom?” 

“Yeah Teresa?” 

The sky was so vibrantly blue his eyes hurt, but in a surprisingly good way. He hadn’t known that was possible. A year ago a lot of things weren’t possible. 

“I’m glad we did everything together.” 

Thomas smiles. “Me too.” 

-

“Hey Thomas?” Brenda called mildly from her spot at the counter of the clothing store.

“Yeah Bren?” He looked over from the Master’s program applications strewn across the counter that he’d been filling out with varying stages of dread. 

Brenda took a slow deep breath in through her nose, closing her eyes and her hands moving upwards to hover on either side of the faded Jesus prayer candle. 

Thomas smiled. “Been working on your little fire tric-_HOLY SHIT OH MY GOD_.” He screamed, falling and scrambling sideways like a crab until his shoulders hit the wall. 

Brenda opened her eyes and the massive column of flames that had burst into life died instantly. She grinned like the sight of Thomas gaping open-mouthed at her brought endless joy. “Still think it’s the wind?” 

“How are we going to explain a scorch mark in the ceiling to Jorge?” Thomas asked weakly, still trying to swallow the image of the fire that had exploded around Brenda’s palms. 

She looked upwards and narrowed her eyes for a minute as she examined the black sooty mark roughly the size of a dinner plate. “It’s brand representation. Scorched Earth with a literal scorch mark. It’ll be a way to stand out with the customers. Jorge’ll love it.” 

Thomas got shakily to his feet, clutching a cabinet to steady himself. “Yeah that’ll work.” 

Hours later, when Minho lifted weights next to him in the gym, he did a double take, leaning in close to examine Thomas’s face with a frown. 

“Dude your missing, like, half an eyebrow.” 

“Brenda.” Thomas offers, dropping his own weight with relief. 

“Ah. No further explanation required.”

-

Their convocation ceremony miraculously lands on the Thursday before the start of Pride and Thomas wonders faintly about deals with the devil (Newt _had_ been pulling a lot of overtime lately). The graduation cap and gown itch and they’re _hot_. It’s _way too hot_ and Thomas melts his way through the speeches, noticing how the Dean pulls a face when he shakes Thomas’s sweaty palm. He can’t help but chuckle. His name is called and no one cheers louder than Chuck, his parents blushing and laughing. Minho is a close second, Brenda a _very_ close third. 

There’s a high-pitched wolf whistle when Thomas walks across the stage that _somehow_ manages to have a british accent. 

At the reception something short circuits in his mind as he watches Newt chat and charm his parents into being potentially more in love with him than even Thomas. 

When Newt reaches over and loosens Thomas’s bowtie before absentmindedly lacing their fingers together Thomas feels himself gazing dopily up at Newt, the world spinning like he might fall over, and revises his previous statement about his parents. 

It was _impossible_ to be more in love with Newt than he was. 

Apparently, it shows on his face because Newt smiles down at him, cheeks a touch pink and eyes glowing. Thomas’s mother _beams_ and Chuck makes barfing motions behind their backs until Teresa elbows him in the ribs. 

“Sorry, twitch.” She offers in apology to Chuck. 

“Better get those twitches checked out.” Brenda advises from her spot draped across Teresa’s shoulder. 

-

The Pride parade is chaos and color and they do three shots of tequila and smoke what was definitely the best joint he’d ever had before heading out. Thomas’s head filling up with flowers and a bright giddy taste on his tongue in the sunlight. Music blasts from speakers on the floats and the crowd is a massive crush of bodies dancing, Thomas shaking his head at the song. 

“Really? _Raising Hell_?” Thomas shouts over the din of music and singing and limbs whipping around them. Newt can’t help but throw his head back and _laugh_ at his disbelief as Brenda let’s out a shriek. (Kesha was, by far, her favorite.) 

Thomas takes a moment just to look, smiling so wide he can feel the rainbow temporary tattoo on his cheek crinkle. 

Harriet and Sonya sat on Minho and Gally’s shoulders respectively, Harriet sporting rainbow striped scrubs. He saw Brenda take a deep steadying breath and grasp Teresa’s hand, and then Teresa and her magic rainbow hair surged forward, kissing Brenda soundly, and then shake her head and laugh at Brenda’s glazed beaming expression. 

There was a thump of base as the song reached its frantic peak and with a blast canons exploded confetti, showering the crowd in a rainbow. Thomas looks up into the chaos of color playing on the wind and then back down, eyes locking with Newt as they danced and spun. Newt’s hands reaching up, one going around his waist, pulling him close. The other resting on the nape of his neck (Newt _really_ had a thing about his neck) and Thomas threw his arms around Newt, kissing him soundly, the two of them laughing against each other’s lips under the sun in an explosion of color. 

And as Thomas kissed Death he could quite honestly say he’d never felt more alive. 

-

Thomas had, for lack of a better word, royally fucked up. He slipped on the brick of the ally (again, fuck) and caught himself with wildly spinning arms that scrabbled for purchase against the fire escape. Steady, he took a deep breath and lunged upward, desperate fingers hooking around the first rung of the ladder hanging eight feet off the ground. 

He was currently hanging off the ground because he was trying to break into his apartment. He was currently trying to break into his apartment because, he had, in fact royally fucked up. The royal fuck up in question was that he’d left a stack of papers that he needed to hand back to his tutorial students today in class. And that said papers in said apartment were key to a previously unmentioned thesis proposal that was due in-_shit_-two hours and twenty-three minutes. He was a _Phd candidate_ for god sakes, he was an _adult_ god damn it, he was getting his _shit_ together by gods will. He was _definitely_ going to congratulate Minho on his skills as a trainer because this was a _lot_ easier this time. 

Tongue sticking out the side of his mouth Thomas swung himself up and climbed the ladder easily. He couldn’t care less about breaking into the apartment that he shared with his boyfriend, but he was a little embarrassed to admit that he’d lost _another_ key. So home invasion it was. Although, did it technically count as home invasion if it was your own home?

Thomas rattled and clanged up the fire escape steps and threw himself frantically into the unlocked window, and of course he tripped and knocked the contents of Newt’s desk all over the floor. Thomas scrambled to pick up the paper work, throwing them into the organized filing system he’d set up ages ago, absentmindedly placing Newt’s reaper I.D card (which now said, simply, _Executive_, the _Junior_ part of the title dropped two months ago) in the ‘Don’t forget’ bowl on his desk next to his car keys, righting the thurible and its stand as well. 

Thomas reached down again to grab more papers and froze. Because. _Huh_. 

Lying on the ground scattered amidst graded papers and Newt’s various expense bills (mostly takeout food and gas) there was a small velvet box, black as midnight both inside and out, knocked open to reveal a simple gold band glittering back at him. 

Thomas reached down with shaking fingers, trying to catch his breath and stop himself from smiling so wide his face split in half as he picked the ring box up to look. A deep burnished gold, initially just a simple band, but with closer inspection it seemed almost as though the ring was hollow and clear, a deep shining thick smoke moving and swirling and almost liquid in its consistency shifting under the glass. 

There was an exasperated sigh and Thomas’s head snapped up, seeing Newt leaning against the doorway, arms crossed and his face a shifting mixture of affectionate exasperation and deep, deep love. 

“Turning this into a bit of a habit, aren’t you?” Newt asked with a chuckle. He nodded at the ring. “Go on then, since you ruined the surprise. What’ll it be?”

Thomas flew across the room, slamming their lips together in joy. “Yes.” He breathed, answering both of Newt’s questions in one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done and DOne!!!!
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone that's taken the time to read/comment/kudo! It's meant the absolute world to me! This fic has been so so much fun to write and I'm honestly a bit sad to see it end! (Maybe some one-shots in the future, who knows!)


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